by Barb Hendee
Leesil flashed into view as he leaped over Magiere’s head and landed in front of the woman.
Blood trailed down the side of his face, spreading into his mouth. Magiere could see that he wasn’t moving fast enough as the woman shifted for his flank.
Panic overran rage as Magiere pushed off to her feet.
Chap rounded Magiere’s far side, trying to flank the female anmaglâhk.
In the span of a few blinks, the woman had wounded Leesil and put Magiere down. Leesil faltered as blood ran into the corner of his right eye, and Magiere would not close in time.
Chap’s head ached, but he charged low at the woman’s legs rather than leap to take her down. She would either dodge or simply slash at him, but he had no other choice to keep her off his companions for a moment.
Leesil tried to strike, and the woman twisted away. He turned his head and seemed to lose sight of her with blood smeared in his eye. The woman wormed inside his guard, driving a stiletto up.
Chap slammed headfirst into her left leg.
Sgäile cleared his mind of all thoughts, even his oath of guardianship. He let silence fill him and clear away distraction.
Hkuan’duv lashed forward with his curved bone knife.
Sgäile spun low, sweeping with his leg, but Hkuan’duv hopped sidewise as Sgäile barely achieved his crouch. Before the Greimasg’äh’s feet touched earth, Sgäile was up again, but he did not close on the master among his caste. He stood his ground, maintaining a defensive posture. He knew he could not win on pure skill against Hkuan’duv’s experience and skills.
Hkuan’duv charged again, and his lunging foot slid forward along the ground.
Sgäile took a wide step left, folding his trailing leg, and kicked down at Hkuan’duv’s face. The Greimasg’äh hit the ground in a straddle and slapped Sgäile’s foot aside without pause. Sgäile swung that foot back, trying to pivot on the other one.
He twisted with both stilettos inward, shielding his abdomen. Hkuan’duv simply leaned out in his straddle and hooked Sgäile’s grounded foot with his free hand.
Sgäile could not get his other foot down, and the Greimasg’äh’s stab came an instant later than anticipated.
As Sgäile began to topple, a stiletto sank to the hilt in the side of his chest.
He choked, not out of pain or even fear of death, but from shame at failure in his oath.
He slashed out with his bone knife just before his back hit the earth. The impact drove the remaining breath from his lungs.
Sgäile felt blood choking him from within and could not breathe. All he could do was roll his head, searching for his opponent. Hkuan’duv had frozen, staring back in startled denial—and his free hand was clamped about his own throat.
Blood welled between his fingers.
Sgäile watched as if through someone else’s eyes as Hkuan’duv fell over. The Greimasg’äh crumpled limp upon the wet sod.
Sgäile heard Osha’s cry, and then blood welled in his throat, filling his mouth.
The world was already dark when Sgäile closed his eyes.
Wynn shuddered as Osha shouted, “Jeóin!”
The female elf froze and half-turned.
“Sgäile!” Leesil yelled.
Magiere charged the elven woman but never reached her target. Chap slammed into the woman’s legs and both tumbled down the knoll. They hit the water and thrashed free of each other.
Wynn shoved Osha’s arm aside, and ran out in the middle of them, screaming, “No more!”
The elven woman stood shin-deep in the murky water as she saw her fallen comrade. Osha reached Sgäile before Leesil and dropped to his knees beside his teacher. Magiere turned, ready to lunge downslope at the elven woman.
Wynn grabbed Magiere’s sword arm with both hands, not knowing what else to do. Before she shouted another word, Osha’s voice rose in Elvish.
“Is this the way of our caste?” he cried, pointing to the Greimasg’äh as he gripped Sgäile’s still form. “Is this what Most Aged Father would want?”
The elven woman’s blank gaze slipped from her fallen companion—but not to Osha. She glared at Wynn—and hatred overran her shock. She turned that hate on Magiere as she backed farther into the water.
“Kill her!” Magiere snapped. “Bring her down, Chap!”
Chap stalked after the woman, paws hammering through murky water.
“No!” Wynn shouted.
“Get off of me,” Magiere snarled, and tried to shove Wynn away.
Wynn slipped her arms tightly around Magiere’s waist and hung on with all her weight. “Chap, let her go!” she called.
She will tell her kind where we are! I will not allow this!
“They found us—they already know!” Wynn shouted back. “More killing will not change that!”
Chap slowed to a halt but did not turn. His whole body appeared to shake under his rumble.
Wynn saw horror spread over the elven woman’s face.
The female anmaglâhk shook her head once in denial or disbelief as she stared off toward the Greimasg’äh’s limp form.
“Go!” Osha shouted, and his voice broke in pain. “Tell Father that the Greimasg’äh is dead . . . because he demanded Sgäilsheilleache break his oath of guardianship . . . break with our people’s own ways!”
Osha choked out these words as Magiere ceased struggling, and Wynn turned her head to look at the young elf.
Osha and Leesil knelt to either side of Sgäile. But as Leesil took Sgäile’s face in his hands, Osha reeled, hanging his head over his teacher.
“Sgäile?” Leesil hissed. “Sgäile . . . look at me!”
Sgäile did not move, and Wynn stopped breathing.
“Tell Most Aged Father . . . ,” Osha went on with head bowed, his voice turning steady and low, “tell him how we spilled the blood of our own . . . and see what is left for us because of it!”
He swung his downcast head toward the elven woman but only raised his eyes to her. There was something on his face that Wynn had never seen there before.
Pure and naïve, desperately longing to be Anmaglâhk, Osha had never shown hate to anyone. But that was how he looked at the woman of his own caste and people.
“I will care for them both,” he said to her. “Go, and wash your hands of our own blood . . . if you can!”
The woman turned and fled.
Chap made one lunge to follow but pursued no farther. Magiere lurched toward the knoll’s shallow slope, dragging Wynn halfway before stopping.
“Let her go,” Leesil said. “It’s over.”
Wynn let go of Magiere and ran to crouch beside Osha.
Sgäile’s eyes were closed. Blood seeped from his slack mouth over Leesil’s hands. A stiletto was buried to its hilt in the side of Sgäile’s chest. Wynn put her hand on him.
“Sgäilsheilleache,” she whispered.
Osha’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her away. She felt his tight, rigid body against her back as she watched Sgäile’s face for any flutter of eyelid.
Leesil jerked the stiletto out, casting it blindly into the marsh. The gash on his face dripped blood off his chin. Like red tears, they struck the dank ground and vanished.
Wynn wished Sgäile would berate her for foolishness—just once more.
Leesil sat numbly within the shack, ignoring Wynn dabbing the blood from his face.
Sgäile was gone. So superstitious and stubborn, with all his blind faith in spirits and codes and customs . . . he was worth so much more than his oath of guardianship.
Leesil’s wound wasn’t deep, but with nothing to fully close it, Wynn could only wrap his head in a bandage from another shredded shirt. The wound would leave a marked scar, but she said he would suffer no permanent damage.
At least not in flesh, and he cared little about scars.
One more meant nothing, though this one would be prominent compared to the faded marks that Ratboy’s fingernails had left on his jaw. By the time Wynn finished, Leesil heard someone hac
king at wood outside of the shack.
He pushed Wynn’s hands away and stepped out beneath a clouded sky.
Chap sat out front, still watching where the elven woman had run off. The dog turned as Leesil emerged and headed silently toward the shack’s rear. Leesil followed and found Magiere and Osha there.
They had slashed away at the underbrush until both were soaked to their elbows and knees from the wet vegetation. In the cleared space’s center, near the old man’s fresh grave, lay Sgäile’s body and that of the other anmaglâhk. The two rested upon a pallet of the firewood taken from behind the shack.
“You don’t wish to bury them?” Leesil asked.
Magiere began covering the bodies with brush. Osha halted but didn’t look at Leesil.
“We bring body home when can,” he said in broken Belaskian. “If cannot, then ashes . . . and if not ashes, then leave behind in hiding. But not bury.”
Osha had cleaned their weapons and set these aside. Magiere halted suddenly, looking about with weary eyes.
“Not enough wood,” she sighed. “Even green wood might help once the blaze gets going.”
She headed for the shack’s far rear corner and the willow rising above the structure. Before she could take a swing with the falchion, Osha seized her raised arm.
“No,” he whispered and looked into the tree’s branches. “Find other . . . not this one.”
Magiere nodded, though she frowned in puzzlement and glanced to Leesil.
He had no idea what had spurred Osha’s strange request.
“I will find some lamp oil,” Wynn said, startling Leesil.
He hadn’t even heard her approach, and turned as she headed away around the shack. Leesil pulled one winged blade, trying to find the driest reeds and brush.
When they’d made the best pyre they could, Wynn returned and poured oil from an old jar. She held out a burning brand taken from the stone hearth.
Osha shook his head. “Not yet.”
Without knowing what to do, Leesil just stood with Magiere and Wynn as Chap settled beside them. Osha closed his eyes, speaking softly in Elvish.
“Hkuan’duv gan’Träi’éarnneach, Greimasg’äh, d’mé âg ahârean eólhasas’na . . .”
Wynn began whispering in translation.
“Blackened Sea of the Iron Shore clan, Shadow-Gripper, whose parents I do not know . . .”
“. . . ag’us Sgäilsheilleache á Oshâgäirea gan’Coilehkrotall . . .”
“. . . and Willow’s Shade born out of Sudden-Breeze’s Laugh of the Lichen Woods clan . . .”
Leesil lifted his eyes and looked to the sagging willow tree as Wynn continued.
“Mothers and Fathers of our people, seek them, siblings of the Anmaglâhk and protectors of your descendants, the an’Cróan—Those of the Blood . . .”
Leesil’s mind filled with memories as Wynn went on.
“. . . Find their spirits and honor them, as they have honored you in a life of a service.”
It seemed so long ago. Leesil had stood with Sgäile in the dark woods as they headed for the burial ground of the ancestors. He’d asked about the strange an’Cróan obsession with seeking a second name in that place. He was only passing time in their brief pause to eat. And when he’d questioned Sgäile, concerning his name supposedly given by these ghosts, Sgäile had never answered completely. But the conversation now stuck in Leesil’s mind.
“So you had some other name before Sgäile?” Leesil had asked.
“Sgäilsheilleache,” he’d corrected. “It means ‘In Willow Shade or Shadow.’ ”
When Leesil had pressed for more information concerning Sgäile’s vision before his ancestors, all the man had said was . . .
“Something far off, far from this land . . . in the shade of a willow.”
At the crackle of fire, Leesil lowered his eyes from the willow tree.
Smoke billowed as oil-sparked flames fought to catch on wet wood. Osha tossed the brand he’d used to light them atop the pyre and continued whispering the same words over and over.
“I call, my voice for theirs,” Wynn softly translated. “Ancestors . . . take them home.”
Leesil tried not to think of . . .
Sgäile’s own name-taking vision, hinting of when and where he would die . . .
Or a ghostly image of some other Leesil, standing in the ancestors’ clearing, cowled in the gray-green of the Anmaglâhk.
Leesil . . . Léshil . . . whose taken name was Léshiârelaohk—Sorrow-Tear’s Champion.
Visions were lies, nothing more. Not fate. Not ever.
Magiere watched the flames fighting to consume their fuel. They needed to move on, and soon. She didn’t trust that the one fleeing anmaglâhk would simply give up. As much as she hated to ask, she did.
“How long?”
Osha breathed deeply and exhaled with an effort. “Until ashes.”
Magiere nodded and kept quiet. When Wynn looked at her sadly, she regretted saying anything at all.
Leesil gazed into the flames.
His brow wrinkled. His eyes narrowed and turned hard, like stones baked in the fire’s heat. The muscles at the back of his jaw bulged, and she heard the creak of leather. His gloved hand closed in a tight fist and wouldn’t release.
Magiere stepped behind him. She slipped her hands under his arms and around his chest, and rested her chin upon his shoulder.
“In Willow’s Shade,” Leesil murmured. “That’s what Sgäile’s name meant.”
One of his hands closed down hard on Magiere’s against his chest— until her fingers ached—but she didn’t pull away.
“We won’t forget him,” she whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Days of rowing carried them north through the worst of the Everfen. Although Magiere wasn’t sure, she believed they were inside Droevinka’s southern edge. Chemestúk, her home village, was many leagues away. But for much of the trip, her thoughts drifted to Apudâlsat as well.
Her mother’s bones lay unattended in Ubâd’s cave near that abandoned village. Coming so close, and not returning to retrieve Magelia’s remains, weighed on Magiere. Even more so when she looked at the two small jars Wynn had cleaned for Osha to bring home the ashes of Sgäile and the Greimasg’äh.
But Magiere kept all this to herself.
They couldn’t linger in her homeland. Not when they carried the artifact from ancient times hidden away beneath canvas.
They spoke little along the way, especially Osha. His thoughts were on Sgäile, his lost teacher, or jeóin. Or was there more behind the new coldness in his eyes?
The marshes grew shallow and small islands denser, and it was time to travel on foot once more.
