Between Their Worlds

Chapter 6

CHANE PACED IN HIS small attic room at Nattie’s inn as the consequences of his actions sank in, deeper and deeper. Shade lay on the bed, head on her paws, her eyes following him back and forth across the floor.

When he had agreed to leave Wynn, so she could stay within reach of the archives, neither he nor she knew the Shyldfälches would descend upon the guild. Nor had he any notion that Shade might abandon Wynn to protect the scroll. Worse still, Premin Hawes now possessed Chane’s precious muhkgean, anasgiah, and The Seven Leaves of Life.

Chane cursed himself for what he had done.

As he began pacing again, Shade let out a grumbling exhale.

The room was as shabby as he remembered, with its small, sagging bed and the slant of the ceiling with the building’s roof overhead. But no one would find him here except Wynn—if she were able. He suddenly remembered how Shade had stared at those metaologers in the courtyard, including Premin Hawes. Perhaps she knew more than he did.

“Did you catch any memories from those sages?”

Again, she looked at him, as if uncertain how to answer. Finally, she hopped off the bed and huffed three times.

“Not certain?” he returned. How could Shade not know if she had caught any memories from people directly in her line of sight?

Of all sagecraft orders, or anyone else, it made sense that metaologers would be highly disciplined, mentally or otherwise. Practitioners of any form or method of magic would not allow errant thoughts—especially unwanted memories—to break their focus. Perhaps Shade had seen or felt something she did not like or had not been able to grasp?

“Do you think Wynn may be in danger?”

Shade instantly huffed once for “yes.”

That was enough for Chane. He had been debating one possible course of action since they had arrived here.

Digging through one of his packs, he found a quill, ink, and paper. He penned a quick note, folded it up, and shoved it into his pocket. As he donned his cloak, pulling the hood forward as much as possible to hide his face, Shade looked expectantly at the door.

“You are too unique-looking,” he said, hoping she fully understood. “You would be noticed, even at night. I will be back soon.”

He headed for the door, fully expecting her to argue in her own way, as always. But when he gripped the door’s handle, she snarled and rushed him. He swung the pack off his shoulder to use as a shield and backed against the corner wall beside the door.

Shade did not come at him. Instead, she huffed angrily twice and growled as she clawed at the door.

Chane was not about to try to grab her and pull her away. She had bitten him more than once, and those bites had burned like nothing else, except Magiere’s falchion.

“Do you want to help Wynn?” he asked.

Shade stopped growling and eyed him, her jowls twitching.

“Then let me go alone. I might pass unnoticed ... but you cannot be spotted or you could give me away. I have an errand that might help Wynn.”

He waited for his words to sink in. Shade’s jowls curled back, baring teeth, but she reluctantly backed away.

Chane nodded to her, trying not to show relief, and slipped out and down the stairs to the inn’s back door. Once out in the night streets, he began jogging wherever the way was clear as he headed toward Calm Seatt’s great port.

Leesil worried about money as he led the way through the streets of Calm Seatt. They’d passed a few inns, but by their upscale exteriors, every one was far beyond affordable.

Years back, he’d lifted a heavily jeweled necklace from a vampire Magiere had beheaded. He sold it for less than it was worth, but its jewels had still garnered what some would call a small fortune. Certainly it was more than the hefty bounty they’d also been paid by the council of Bela back home. But in their travels across two continents, even a small fortune had its limits. The last year had eaten away nearly all of their funds.

He’d counted on the guild’s hospitality; that was certainly out of the question now. Usually, he was free enough with a coin—too free for Magiere’s penny-pinching, as she had once watched every groat or shil he spent. But there was a far cry between “cheap” and “short of funds.”

Yet even his worrying about it marked another way in which they’d traded places after what had occurred up in the Wastes. She had become the rash and impulsive one, while he was forced into greater caution and wariness. And now, their dwindling resources rarely occurred to Magiere, unless she actually saw him take out the coin pouch.

Leesil slowed in the street, forcing Chap to circle back.

“What?” Magiere asked, and he found her studying him. “I thought you wanted a room and something to eat.”

He started to bite his lower lip and then stopped.

What was wrong with him? Cunning people never let their worries show to anyone, even those they loved—especially those they loved. Wandering a foreign city was witless, as well, but he’d expected to be safely housed at the guild. It seemed he’d lost some of his edge in worrying about losing her ... to that other her, the one who had shown herself at the end of their journey into the northern Wastes.

Magiere’s hand closed on his arm. “Leesil?”

He took a deep breath to clear his head. “We need directions from someone who might know of a cheap inn ... and that someone is certainly not in this kind of neighborhood.”

But where else could they look? Maybe he’d have to ask someone here, but there were so few people out at night. He turned all ways before spotting a possible prospect.

A lamplighter half a block back was unloading a ladder from a mule-drawn cart.

Leesil snorted. “Well, that one doesn’t look like a local.”

Magiere stepped around him. “I’ll go. You still don’t speak Numanese worth a wit.”

Chap rushed in two steps, but Leesil grabbed Magiere’s arm first—too sudden and firm. He quickly loosened his grip and faked a smile.

“I can manage,” he said. And at Magiere’s suspicious glare, he added, “When else am I going to get the practice?”

“This isn’t the time,” she argued.

“Wait with Chap. We don’t need you terrorizing the locals. Save that for any ruffians invading our tavern, my dragon.”

Magiere scowled over the pet name that only he called her. It was the right kind of scowl—or so he hoped—as in the old days, when he purposefully goaded her.

He passed her the travel chest and took off down the street. Keeping his hands in plain sight and feigning his lost-traveler demeanor, he approached the elderly man in a floppy canvas hat who was about to climb up and replace a lantern wick.

Again, Leesil flashed a smile. He slowly pulled out the nearly empty coin pouch, shook it gently, and then pointed to the two lavish inns within sight.

“Room?” he asked in Numanese. “Little coin?”

The old man squinted a bit at Leesil’s thick accent, but his eyes brightened with a smile as he pointed northeast. Leesil nodded deeply as he touched a hand to his heart and then extended it toward the old man. The lamplighter tipped his floppy hat in return.

Leesil returned to Magiere and Chap, and they were off again. But as they headed northeast down street after street, he noticed fewer and fewer lit lampposts along the way. The streets began to change bit by bit.

Buildings became smaller, more worn, and then outright shabby. Shake and shale roofs were replaced by ones of irregular planks and sometimes even thatch. The mixture of structures grew until he couldn’t be sure if any one of them was a shop, domicile, both, or something else. The only life in the street came from taverns or public houses, which weren’t always marked with a sign.

A sailor stumbled out of a broad, run-down building. The noise of loud voices spilled out around him before the door swung shut.

Magiere grumbled under her breath when the man wobbled to a street side and threw up on the cobble. Chap gave the drunkard a wide berth, and if Leesil hadn’t looked over, he would’ve been spared Magiere’s sidelong glare.

“Well,” he said. “I did ask the man for something cheap. He must have taken me at my word.”

“Yes,” she answered dryly, “he must have ... if he understood you.”

Leesil hadn’t seen a single dwelling that resembled an inn. In too many places, the cobblestones were cracked, broken apart, or sunken. The remaining holes were filled with grime and rain like scattered pots of muck, all the way up the street.

This area was below even Magiere’s “thrifty” standards, and Leesil didn’t care for it himself. Even Chap grumbled, his head low, and he usually wanted all of them well off the mainways. Leesil had almost given up hope when he glanced into an empty side street.

Two blocks down, light leaked from the open-shutter windows of a two-story building. Two stories weren’t common here, and lit lanterns actually hung under a roofed front landing. By a trail of smoke caught in the light, Leesil spotted a bear-sized man in a full cloak puffing on a long-stemmed pipe. Two people came out the front door. Though Leesil couldn’t make them out as they turned away up the road, neither one was stumbling. No interior ruckus had followed them before the door swung closed, just after the pipe puffer strolled inside.

“Over there,” Leesil said. He turned down that side street, but halfway along the first block, he froze and spun to his left.

“What now?” Magiere mumbled.

Leesil peered into a cutway between the buildings, but it was too dark to see where the back end might meet an alley behind the buildings. He could swear something had moved in the corner of his sight. It was only an instant’s glimpse when ...

“Leesil!” Magiere hissed. She dropped the chest, and it thudded onto the street.

Leesil spun back as Chap snarled.

A tall figure stood midstreet, short of the next crossing road. He’d barely made it out when a memory raised by Chap filled his head. That image echoed what he saw.

The light of the far porch lanterns didn’t help much, but the figure wore a cloak with the corners tied up around its waist. The fabric of its leggings and sleeves was dark, but tinted to green. And in that memory he saw what his eyes couldn’t make out within the shadow of its cowl.

Above a wrap of forest gray across its mouth and nose were large amber, almond-shaped eyes below high, feathery blond eyebrows in a face darkly tanned.

The figure in the street was an anmaglâhk, a member of a caste of spies and assassins among the an’Cróan, the elven people of the eastern continent. Something narrow, the length of a forearm, glinted silvery in both of the figure’s hands.

Leesil heard someone land too softly down the street behind him, and he jerked free the bindings on the sheaths lashed to his thighs. As Magiere ripped her falchion from its sheath, he pulled both winged punching blades, whirling to face whoever was behind them.

Another anmaglâhk stood silent up the street.

How could they be here—now—from the other side of the world?

Chap’s sudden snarl cut off in a clack of his teeth. Leesil barely looked back as Chap bolted forward, straight at the one blocking the way. Before Leesil could shout at the dog to stop, a barrage of memories flooded his head.

He saw himself and Magiere running through the elven forest in the Farlands. Then came an earlier time when they’d fled from being outnumbered by Lord Darmouth’s men in Leesil’s own homeland. Images came faster and faster, all of them memories of flight.

They weren’t outnumbered here, but Leesil couldn’t mistake Chap’s intention—if they quickly overwhelmed the one ahead of them, they might be able to make a break.

“Run!” Leesil shouted to Magiere, as he dashed after Chap.

Another forest gray figure dropped from the rooftops. It landed a dozen paces ahead, between Chap and the first anmaglâhk. Smaller and slighter, it instantly charged, and Chap swerved into its path. Leesil kept his focus on the first one until ... the second smaller one leaped.

Chap’s teeth clacked on empty air as the small anmaglâhk hurdled over him.

The option to run was gone, and Leesil swerved into the small one’s path. He blocked its first slash with his left blade. In that instant, he saw its—her—eyes. Everything around him seemed to grow still and quiet.

Leesil had faced these assassins more than once, blade for blade. He knew their cold, dispassionate, deadly calm. His mother had been one of them and trained him in their way, but this small anmaglâhk’s amber eyes glistened, as if they might well with tears. They weren’t filled with the calm of an assassin fixed on its target. They were overwhelmed with anguish that had built to fury.

Leesil almost faltered. He’d seen eyes like those before ... when they recognized him.

They had looked upon him in youth and long after. They peered at him within his dreams, out of faces ravaged by grief. They watched him in his sleep for every life he’d taken at the order of Darmouth, who had held him and his parents as slave servants.

Those were the eyes that starved for vengeance.

But of all he’d killed in his youth, not one had been a member of this elven people, the an’Cróan—“Those of the Blood.” His only an’Cróan victim had come much later, and it had been one of the anmaglâhk.

One night, when he’d stopped over in the Warlands on his way to the an’Cróan’s hidden land to find his mother, two anmaglâhk had gone after the warlord Darmouth. Leesil, along with Chap and Magiere, had been forced to defend that tyrant. In the end, a master anmaglâhk named Brot’an had tricked him into murdering Darmouth. But before that, Brot’an’s accomplice, Groyt, had come at him. Leesil had killed Groyt in self-defense, but that meant nothing to those left in grief.

Leesil never forgot the names of those he’d killed or those his victims left behind. And now he faced a victim of grief.

Én’nish, betrothed of Groyt, slashed a hook-bladed bone knife at Leesil’s throat.

He caught the strike with his left blade, and his mind cleared. He would take the guilt heaped upon him, for he’d earned that. He could suffer that and more, as he already had, to get Magiere away from here.

Leesil drove the point of his other winged blade for Én’nish’s midsection.

Chap’s hope of flight vanished when the small anmaglâhk leaped over him. He did not turn back for it.

If Leesil could handle that one elven assassin, perhaps Magiere could fend off those coming from behind. But they all had to reach the next intersection, or they would be boxed in.

Chap had to take down the one that remained in their way.

He had no idea how these assassins had made it here—or how they had even picked up a trail. But there was no need to guess who they were after. Aoishenis-Ahâre—Most Aged Father, patriarch of the Anmaglâhk—had wanted Magiere dead since the day they all walked into the Elven Territories, and then left that place still alive.

When the first anmaglâhk charged wide, trying to follow its smaller comrade, it did not surprise Chap. He turned to intercept it, head-on. The elf instantly slowed, slashing down with an oversized bone knife, its silvery white blade curved into a hook.

The blade passed through air before Chap had even closed, and he saw hesitation in the male elf’s eyes.

He had been uncertain if this advantage would hold. Apparently, it did. Even among anmaglâhk, all an’Cróan feared harming a sacred majay-hì. He would not be so kind in turn.

Chap leaped, snapping for the man’s face, and the anmaglâhk spun out of his reach. As he landed, the elf tried to charge onward, and he wheeled around. He quickly closed from behind, jaws spread, ready to tear out the back of the elf’s knee.

Magiere saw Leesil dash out in front of her and clash blades with the smaller anmaglâhk ahead of them. As the first anmaglâhk who’d appeared tried to close, Chap wheeled around it, coming at it from behind. At the snap of his jaws, that elf dove forward upon the cobble and rolled aside to its feet.

Magiere’s senses widened fully, and the night lit up her sight.

Her eyes watered at the stinging points of lantern lights down the street. Hunger welled like acid rising from her stomach into her throat, and that burning flushed through every muscle and bone. Her jaw ached under the change in her teeth.

She heard and felt through the street’s cobble the running footsteps behind her. She spun away to the street’s side, whipping her falchion in a level arc amid her turn.

A tall anmaglâhk ducked under the blade. Before she could reverse, he charged straight at a shack’s front. Her reason gone, instinct drove Magiere to turn fast. Instinct was too late.

She barely finished a direct thrust, and all her falchion did was shatter through the shack’s boards. The anmaglâhk took another step upward, as if running up the wall. He pushed off, arching over her head before she could rip her sword free.

Magiere knew a blade in her back was next—but it never came.

One arm suddenly wrapped around her throat. The other shot out around her, as he gripped her wrist above her sword hand. His weight pressed on her as he wrenched her neck to the right.

Magiere began to topple under the strength of her assailant. Amid the twist, he folded her sword arm in against her stomach. He was trying to put her down and pin her.

Shock and panic cleared her mind, and her hunger receded partway. Anmaglâhk didn’t fight like this. They came like ghosts in the dark, only felt by the touch of a fist, foot, or sharp, silver-white weapons.

Rage and hunger flooded back in, until it was all that was left in Magiere’s mind.

She latched her free hand on to the forearm around her neck and threw her own strength into their toppling spin. She caught a glimpse of Leesil fighting the smaller anmaglâhk, and then her view filled with buildings across the street.

Magiere grounded her feet and heaved with both legs.

The shack’s corner crackled as her weight and effort slammed the anmaglâhk back into it. His grip on her neck faltered, and she thrashed free, ripping her sword arm out of his grip. She slashed at him as she turned, but he ducked, and her falchion tore a hunk out of the shack’s corner.

“Fhœt’as-na â, äm-an!”

Magiere barely heard that shout in the street, and then her left leg suddenly gave way. She stumbled in confusion, and only then did a searing pain cut through her heat. She looked down with wide eyes.

An arrow shaft protruded through Magiere’s left thigh, and her leg buckled completely.

Leesil’s thrust missed as Én’nish bent her midsection like a marsh reed. All he could do before her next thrust was throw himself at her. Something struck the inside of his right calf, forcing his foot to slip, but it wasn’t enough. He slammed down on top of her.

Rolling off, he slashed wildly with one blade, and heard a clang of metal. He kicked out once but didn’t connect as he spun away into the street.

Coming up into a crouch, he saw Én’nish do the same.

She stared at him with a hatred he’d seen cast his way more than once. Holding out her curved bone knife, she had reverse gripped it in her left hand, ready to hook one of his own blades when he came at her. Her other hand wielded a narrow stiletto of the same silver-white metal, ready to thrust in low where he’d have to drop his own second blade to catch it.

Én’nish’s eyes shifted for less than a blink, but Leesil didn’t catch where she’d glanced.

“Fhœt’as-na â, äm-an!” she shouted.

Leesil didn’t understand the words, but he whipped his head both ways.

To the right, Chap circled the first anmaglâhk, who was on his feet but too hesitant to close on the dog. To the left, a rearward anmaglâhk struggled to regain his feet, while yet a fourth had dropped from a rooftop and was rushing toward the street side. Magiere was crumpled on one knee, struggling to get up.

An arrow shaft stuck out both sides of her left thigh.

Én’nish shifted into Leesil’s path, blocking his sight as the fourth anmaglâhk closed on Magiere. Leesil couldn’t hesitate any longer.

He charged, thrusting both blades at Én’nish’s head as he shouted, “Chap, Magiere’s hit! Archer on the roof!”

Én’nish whipped her head aside, thrusting the stiletto under at him, and he slashed downward with both hands.

His left blade pulled down her bone knife hooked in the winged blade’s handle. He felt something grate along his left side, catching briefly in his hauberk’s iron rings. A tearing sound came and went, but he didn’t know if it came from his armor or her clothes.

Én’nish spun out of Leesil’s way before his right blade could take off her hand.

Leesil didn’t slow as he spotted Magiere trying to rise. Racing toward her, he slashed wildly at the fourth anmaglâhk closing in just before he rammed straight into Magiere. She toppled backward into the cutway under his force, and Leesil blindly slashed back to fend off anyone behind him.

He hated to leave Chap alone in the open, but he had no choice, and Chap could outdistance anyone here, if he had to.

Leesil kicked out at the anmaglâhk still trying to regain his feet at the shack’s corner. That one ducked and somehow spun into the cutway’s mouth, rising with a blade in each hand. Én’nish had to be closing by now, and Leesil had lost track of the fourth elf, but he couldn’t look back. He had to keep the one in front of him from turning around and going after Magiere.

Something thin and silvery flashed downward before Leesil’s face.

He had barely an instant to thrust upward with his right winged blade. A garrote caught on the tip of his blade. Then a knee rammed into his back as the wire’s wielder pulled it tight. His blade jerked in against his chest, its tip and the wire cinched against his throat.

“Yield, or she dies ... you all die!” Én’nish hissed behind him.

Her accent was thick but the words were perfect Belaskian, Leesil’s native tongue, and the words stuck in his head.

Yield, or she dies ...

They were trying to take Magiere alive.

Magiere stumbled along the shack’s wall in the cutway’s darkness where Leesil had shoved her, and she then crumpled. Even with piercing pain in her thigh, she struggled to gain her feet. At the sounds of clashing weapons and Chap’s snarls out in the street, she clawed up the wall and looked back.

In the cutway’s mouth stood the black silhouette of an anmaglâhk, and beyond him ...

Leesil stood a few paces from the cutway’s mouth with the point of one of his own winged blades at his throat. For an instant, Magiere didn’t understand, and then she spotted the forest gray, cowled head over Leesil’s left shoulder.

A silver-white garrote was pulled tight around his neck. Only his blade’s tip kept the wire from cutting into his throat.

At that sight, fear flooded through Magiere, and hunger rose to eat her pain. She felt her eyeteeth elongate as reason died under fury, and she tried to shout at the one holding Leesil. All that came from her throat was a harsh, high-pitched screech that filled the night air.

The anmaglâhk in the cutway’s mouth stiffened and backed up a half step.

Magiere shrieked as she charged.

Leesil’s mouth opened, perhaps shouting to her, but she didn’t hear him. She gripped the falchion’s hilt with both hands. Nothing mattered but killing anyone that touched him—anything that even got near him. She didn’t get far.

Magiere lurched to a halt, arching backward, as something pulled her cloak taut from behind. She tried to slash back with her falchion one-handed, but the long, heavy blade rammed against the narrow cutway’s wall. She struggled to turn and grab hold of her cloak.

A sharp strike landed on Magiere’s shoulder at the base of her neck. The night’s brightness dimmed as everything spun in her sight. She lost her grip on the falchion as she was wrenched back down the cutway.

“Magiere!”

Leesil couldn’t help crying out when she suddenly lurched backward into the cutway’s deeper darkness. She vanished from his sight. In only a breath, he heard the clatter of heavy steel, as if her sword had dropped. Fear turned him cold.

How could so many anmaglâhk be coming at them from so many directions? He had just shoved Magiere into the hands of another waiting there in the dark cutway. But the one between him and the opening froze and didn’t follow her. That one didn’t even turn around as he whispered something sharp in Elvish.

Leesil couldn’t follow the words, but he felt Én’nish fidget behind him. She barked an answer, and the only part he recognized and understood was “bârtva’na”—no, do nothing. Then he was jerked back as Én’nish shouted up the street.

“Vorthash majay-hì—äm-an!”

Leesil spotted Chap still ranging there. The one anmaglâhk that the dog kept at bay glanced toward Én’nish and then back down at Chap. That one raised his blades to poised positions, and then he hesitated.

Én’nish shouted again in greater anger, and Leesil took his chance. He slammed his free arm back, driving his elbow and a blade’s long wing tip at Én’nish’s abdomen.

It struck nothing.

The wire cinched tighter around Leesil’s neck, and his pinned blade tip bit into his skin.

All that Chap had been able to do was hold one anmaglâhk at bay. He could outrun and cut off any one of them, but he could not fully outmaneuver his adversary. In his effort, he had backed farther and farther toward Leesil and Magiere. Even in his rushes at his opponent, he had not laid tooth or claw into the man. Yet his adversary still appeared unwilling to strike him. And somewhere above was an archer.

Magiere had been hit, and Chap had not even been able to turn to see what had happened to her.

“Vorthash majay-hì— äm-an !”

Chap understood the shout: Kill the majay-hì—now!

The anmaglâhk’s eyes flickered above the forest gray wrap across his lower face. He raised his weapons but still did not attack. When the shout from the female came again, his eyes rose, glancing down the street.

Chap took two lunging steps and leaped.

Both of his forepaws struck the man’s chest. As his weight followed, the elf began to topple. Chap struck with his rear paws, tearing at the man’s thighs, snapping his teeth at the man’s face. The elf jerked his head away, and his skull struck the cobble first under Chap’s bulk.

Chap spun off, charging down the street, but his breath caught. The smaller anmaglâhk had a garrote around Leesil’s throat, and Magiere was nowhere to be seen. Panic quickened Chap’s heartbeat more than his efforts. As he was about to throw himself at Leesil’s captor, he heard a breathy hiss in the night air and twisted aside.

An arrow tip struck the cobble a stride to his right.

Chap glanced up as he raced on, and he tried to gauge from where the arrow had come. He caught the soft puff of a bowstring’s release, and he quickly swerved again.

No arrow struck the street. The sound of the bowstring had not come from along the first arrow’s path, but a barking Elvish curse followed from that direction.

Chap had no notion what was happening up on the rooftops. There were at least two archers above, though the second had not fired at him. Two unseen archers could prove devastating with Magiere already wounded. He howled, trying to draw attention, as he closed on Leesil.

Leesil heard Chap coming, but he still couldn’t spot Magiere, and the anmaglâhk in the cutway’s mouth spun around. All Leesil could hope to do was scatter everyone’s attention until Chap reached him. He thrust one foot back between Én’nish’s legs.

He planted it hard, prepared to lurch back into her and twist, and ...

A tall form appeared too suddenly, too silently from the cutway’s darkness.

It was as if the figure had been there in the dark all along and simply materialized in the passage’s opening. The one anmaglâhk standing before the cutway and now facing Leesil didn’t seem to hear it. Leesil’s senses sharpened as his mind took in the newcomer.

He was taller than any elf in sight and broader of shoulder. Instead of forest gray, he wore a dusky wool cloak with a full hood. His face was lost in the hood’s shadows, though his jaw and mouth appeared to be covered with a black scarf or wrap. But even if he wasn’t dressed like the Anmaglâhk, in his gloved hands were long, silver-white stilettos.

Leesil couldn’t believe how many elves from the eastern continent had been sent so far from home to come after them—after Magiere.

It had been more than two years since they had secured the first orb and fled with it, only to have a pair of anmaglâhk come for them, demanding Magiere release what she had into their hands. The confrontation had ended in bloodshed and death on both sides.

Apparently, it had not ended at all.

Leesil tried to peer beyond the newcomer into the alley. Where was Magiere? There were too many anmaglâhk to fight, even with Chap’s help, if he remained captive. In that racing instant, two things happened.

The wire around Leesil’s neck slid upward along his pinned blade, as if Én’nish were trying to slip it over the blade’s tip to his throat. And the newcomer shouted in Elvish.

“Fhœt’as-na dœrsa!”

The one anmaglâhk before the cutway spun about and then quickly retreated two paces at the sight of the newcomer. The fourth anmaglâhk, creeping in to join his companion, froze three paces off, raising both blades in defense. And the wire stopped sliding up Leesil’s blade.

Leesil couldn’t speak Elvish, and Wynn had told him never to try. He understood the few words she’d taught him, but the newcomer’s command in that guttural, lilting language had come too fast for him to catch anything. He didn’t know what was happening, and he didn’t care. This brief hesitation was all he needed.

Leesil slipped his blade tip out from beneath the garrote. As the wire snapped tight against his neck, he twisted around on Én’nish.

Chap slowed for an instant, startled by a tall form appearing suddenly in the cutway’s opening.

“Fhœt’as-na dœrsa!”

He understood the an’Cróan dialect perfectly: Disable the captor!

The captor ... not the captive? What was happening?

Then Leesil twisted around on his captor, and the garrote pulled taut against his neck.

Chap forgot everything and leaped from a dead run. He was in the air when he heard the small anmaglâhk shriek. Then he hit her, and they both tumbled along the cobblestones. A sharp pain burned across the side of his head. He scrambled up, ready to rush her again, and then froze.

The small one rolled over, teetering as she stood up. An arrow with black feathers was stuck through her left upper arm, and her silvery stiletto lay on the street.

Leesil ripped the garrote off his throat, but Chap was still stalled, wondering what had just happened. Who had shot the small female? And the voice of the newcomer worked in his thoughts.

Chap knew that voice from somewhere.

Leesil felt the garrote drag and cut across the back of his neck as Én’nish cried out. He stumbled as Chap knocked her clear, and then he ripped the garrote off, looking for the closest opponent, and ...

The tall newcomer went straight at the anmaglâhk between them.

Both men became almost a blur in Leesil’s sight. Amid the click and screech of stiletto blades, the anmaglâhk that Chap had faced up the street came racing in. Leesil had to turn away. His slash missed as the anmaglâhk passed him, and when he looked for Chap ...

There was Én’nish, holding her left arm, with an arrow protruding from it. She nearly screamed out in Elvish, and Leesil understood only one word—go!

Everything changed.

Én’nish and the one who’d gone after Chap sped back the way Leesil had first come. The one creeping toward the cutway’s mouth backed up and shouted at the last, now locked in battle with the tall newcomer. That last anmaglâhk leaped backward, trying to disengage, and the newcomer matched him like a shadow in flight. One of his blades cut out and up, slashing through that last anmaglahk’s shoulder.

The anmaglâhk didn’t flinch or pause. He twisted away from the newcomer’s next strike and came straight at Leesil, and Leesil took a step to meet him. The anmaglâhk suddenly dropped to the street in midrun.

Leesil felt a foot hook his right ankle, and he careened forward, straight toward the newcomer. Off balance, all he could do was swing on instinct.

The tall newcomer instantly inverted one stiletto and sidestepped.

Leesil’s weak strike met with empty air. Something struck his right temple and the world went black. Through the ringing in his ears, he barely felt the impact as he hit the cobble street.

Everything had gone dark again in Magiere’s sight as she struggled to take up her falchion and rise again. All her wild hunger was gone, and without it, the pain in her thigh nearly made her fall. Her head was ringing and her neck ached from whatever had hit her. When she found herself down the cutway again, she wasn’t certain how she’d gotten there.

The first thing she spotted out of the cutway’s mouth was Leesil in the street, trying to get up. She hobbled along the cutway’s wall, trying to get to him, and then the silhouette of a very tall figure stepped into her view.

The cloaked and hooded man, so overly tall, suddenly turned her way, as if knowing she was there.

A distant street lantern glinted on the thin anmaglâhk stilettos in his gloved hands. The stranger stood over Leesil.

Magiere tried to raise her falchion as she lunged along the cutway’s wall.

That tall, cloaked figure flipped one blade into his other hand with the second weapon. He raised his empty hand, palm out toward her. His hood shifted as if he shook his head slightly.

Leesil regained his feet, but the newcomer remained where he stood, and Magiere hesitated.

She couldn’t see much inside the dark pocket of the man’s hood. With the exception of the dark fabric across his lower face, he wasn’t dressed like an anmaglâhk. He reached down with his free hand and unfastened his cloak’s corners, which were tied up around his waist, like an anmaglâhk would do. She noticed the cloak was brown, like the jerkin beneath it. With his marred, dun-colored pants and worn, soft calf-high boots, he looked like some overly tall, overly weathered traveler.

But not so with those blades in his hand.

Leesil wobbled, blinked, and rubbed his head as if, like Magiere, he’d been struck down. Chap came racing into view from down the street as Magiere reached the cutway’s mouth. His hackles were stiff as he circled Leesil and growled at the stranger. When he caught sight of her, his growl faded.

A rush of memories flooded the forefront of Magiere’s mind.

She saw a grove of trees outside the glade where Leesil’s mother had been imprisoned. A party of anmaglâhk had attacked all of them, and Chap had tried to drive one off, chasing him. This memory replayed several times, and Magiere understood.

The anmaglâhk had fled for some reason. Chap had given chase and then broke off to come back.

The cloaked stranger raised his head a little, just enough that Magiere thought she saw the spark of amber eyes inside the darkness of his hood. A shrill whistle rose from him as he tucked both blades up his sleeves, waved Leesil forward, and then strode straight toward the cutway’s mouth.

Magiere raised her falchion, and he slowed. Somewhere behind him, Chap began to growl again. The stranger pointed beyond Magiere, down the cutway, and then just walked right past, not even looking at her.

She was exhausted and the pain in her thigh was growing. With one shoulder against the wall, she tried to turn and keep the man in her sight.

Leesil was suddenly at her side. He sheathed one blade and grabbed her arm on the side opposite her wounded leg. Just the sight of his tan face brought her a little relief. They’d survived the Anmaglâhk—again—but the manner in which this had happened left Magiere wary as she glanced along the cutway.

The stranger paused down the dark path between the buildings. Half turning, he motioned for them to follow.

Magiere looked to Leesil, about to ask who the man was. Leesil just shook his head, his eyes unblinking, narrowed, and still fixed on the tall one. He pulled her arm over the back of his neck, and they headed down the cutway with Chap close behind, growling softly.

Chap did not care for this tall, convenient “savior” who had appeared out of the darkness. Although he had chased the fleeing anmaglâhk as far as he could, they had continuously split up, forcing him into choosing a quarry. He had kept after the wounded female to the last. Even with an arrow through her arm, she’d managed to make a leaping grab at a shop’s awning. She pulled herself out of his reach and was gone across the rooftops before he could see which way.

Now Chap and his two charges followed this unknown, human-garbed savior down a narrow cutway in the night. He had heard only a few words from the man, who had spoken in the an’Cróan dialect of Old Elvish, as Wynn had labeled it. He could not get this newcomer’s voice out of his head. Yet try as he did, he had not heard enough to match the voice to a face. With Leesil and Magiere ahead of him, he did not have a clear enough line of sight to try to dip into any of the stranger’s rising memories.

The slap of stumbling steps sounded behind Chap, and he instantly wheeled in the narrow path.

Another shadowed figure crouched in the cutway behind him, as if it had dropped from above into a poor landing. Even in the dark, Chap spotted the bow in the figure’s hand. He rushed at it, snapping for its face before it could straighten up. It dropped the bow, stumbling back along the wall in a hasty retreat.

“No ... stop ... friend! I am friend!”

The words were Belaskian, but the light male voice was thick with an elven accent—an an’Cróan accent.

“Chap ... what are you doing?” Leesil called from up ahead.

Chap did not take his eyes off this second newcomer. This male wore a tawny brown cloak, and he was almost as tall as their unknown savior, though slighter of build. Strangely, his sleeves were narrow, leaving no room for blades inside them, and his left forearm had an archer’s sheath strapped around it.

Chap crept closer, still snarling.

The slender figure quickly reached up and pulled back his hood, exposing large, slanted eyes with amber irises in the dark-skinned face of a young an’Cróan male. Those eyes were wide in worry, as they should be in facing him.

Chap stalled as he looked closer.

Long, white-blond hair framed long features ... the kind that Wynn had once called horselike for their slight flatness, even to his long nose.

“Yes ... yes, me,” the elf said quickly.

Chap stopped growling.

It was Osha, who had accompanied all of them, along with Sgäile, in their search for the first orb.

Indeed, Osha had been a friend, even as an anmaglâhk. He had watched over Wynn as best he could, and stood as Leesil’s witness in marriage to Magiere. Osha had been very fond—possibly more than fond—of Wynn. But the sight of him brought no relief to Chap. Sgäile was dead, and if Osha was here now, then ...

Chap whirled, a rumble growing in his chest as his hackles rose. His jowls pulled back, baring his teeth, as he raced down the cutway to get past Leesil and Magiere.

He knew who that first tall stranger must be.

Leesil stood in the cutway, holding up Magiere with one winged punching blade in his hand as he looked back. He barely made out someone else in the cutway beyond Chap. In the moment, he was functioning almost on pure instinct, but he didn’t like being forced to accept help from a stranger, especially one who fought like a well-trained anmaglâhk. But Magiere was injured, they were in a foreign city without lodgings, and they’d just barely escaped a surprise attack.

“What’s going on back there?” Magiere whispered, and then gasped in sudden pain. “What’s Chap doing?”

Leesil shook his head and made sure he had a good grip on her. She was bad off if she couldn’t see the other figure beyond Chap. Glancing the other way, he spotted their rescuer farther on, standing where the cutway intersected with a broad alley. But their rescuer was not alone.

A third figure clutching a lantern with an open shutter waited near the intersection’s far left corner. This one was smaller. Though she was fully hooded, Leesil could see a long wool skirt of dark green below the hem of a dull burgundy cloak. Her hands were slender and fragile, and she was more than a head shorter than the tall stranger. He studied her for only an instant, and then his attention dropped to the alley floor at her feet.

Barely two steps from the female’s skirt hem lay a body.

Only the torso of that dead anmaglâhk clad in dark forest gray was visible from where Leesil stood. Its head was twisted around at an impossible angle.

The tall one snapped something in Elvish, flipping one hand quickly toward the lantern. Likely he wanted the small female to close its shutter. She only flinched at his voice, and her hood turned up toward him.

Leesil stiffened as the lantern illuminated the tan face of a young elven woman. But more startling was the spark of her eyes. Not amber, but topaz, leaning almost to pure green. He knew of only one elf ... one quarter-blood in the world with eyes like that.

“Leanâlhâm?”

Magiere shuddered in Leesil’s hold. “What?”

Before he answered, she peered along his sightline.

Magiere was riveted by the sight of Leanâlhâm, and Leesil hardly knew what to think. He’d not seen the girl in several years, and that had been in the an’Cróan Elven Territories of the eastern continent. She’d been a friend to him, Magiere, and Chap, and to Wynn, as well. What was she doing here?

“Yes ... yes, me!”

He heard that voice behind him speaking poorly in Belaskian, and looked back. Almost instantly, a snarl sounded in the alley, and Chap came at him at a dead run.

Chap’s fur bristled all over. He bared his teeth as he let out a crackling growl that wouldn’t stop.

Leesil pulled Magiere against the cutway’s wall and out of the way, and Chap bolted straight by them.

What was happening now?

“What is Leanâlhâm doing here?” Magiere asked, her voice growing louder. “Who is that with her?”

When she tried to pull away and head down the alley, Leesil restrained her.

“Watch our backs! Watch behind!” he told her, and then he let go.

Chap hadn’t raised any warning memories for Leesil; he didn’t have to. Leesil suddenly knew who was inside that cloak and hidden beneath that black face wrap. It all came together around an overly tall stranger dressed—disguised—like a human, but who fought like an anmaglâhk and frightened his own kind.

Leesil took off after Chap as he drew his second winged blade.

Magiere braced against the wall, falchion in hand, as she looked repeatedly up and down the cutway. At the far intersection stood Leanâlhâm, but Chap had raced by in a fury, leaving someone else behind all of them.

She tried to right herself, gripping her blade, and call up the hunger to eat away her pain. It barely answered her will, and the lantern in Leanâlhâm’s hand burned her eyes slightly. When she looked back the other way, someone was right on top of her.

Magiere tried to raise her falchion one-handed as she made a grab with her other hand.

“No! No fight ... We help!”

Magiere froze, stunned, as she stared into Osha’s panicked face. She quickly looked down the cutway to where it met a crossing alley.

Chap threw himself at the tall figure as Leesil grabbed Leanâlhâm and jerked the girl away. The tall man spun out of reach, and Chap bounded off a shop’s back corner. The stranger ducked into where the cutway continued beyond the alley.

Leesil closed behind the dog, shouting at Chap’s target, “You ... you old butcher! What are you up to now?”

Magiere started to hobble after them, and Osha quickly grabbed her arm to help her along. She tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go. Ahead, Leanâlhâm rushed at Leesil, the lantern rattling in her grip, and grabbed his sleeve.

“No ... not do this,” she shouted, her words broken in a language she couldn’t speak well.

Leesil jerked free and pushed Leanâlhâm back as Magiere hobbled into the intersection, with Osha still determined to help her. When Leanâlhâm saw Magiere, her eyes widened at the sight of the embedded arrow in Magiere’s thigh. Her cheeks were covered in tears, and she lunged, grabbing the front of Magiere’s studded hauberk.

“Make ... them stop!” she cried.

Magiere still didn’t know what was going on, but if Chap was angry and Leesil backed him up, Chap had good reason. She pulled out of Osha’s grip and shoved Leanâlhâm behind her as the tall man stepped out of the cutway’s far half.

He held anmaglâhk blades again, but he brushed off his hood with the back of one hand.

“Please,” Leanâlhâm whispered, as she grabbed Magiere’s sword arm.

But all Magiere could do was stare.

By the jostled lantern’s light, four old scars ran at a slant across the tall elf’s deeply tanned forehead. They cut through his right, feathery blond eyebrow, skipped over his hard amber eye, and continued at his cheekbone to disappear beneath the black cloth over his nose and mouth. His long, coarse hair was streaked with gray a tint darker than his people’s natural white blond.

Magiere didn’t need to see the rest of his face to know him. His full Elvish name was too difficult to pronounce, and she’d taken to calling him by a shortened version.

The sight of Brot’an, here in this city on another continent, was too much to take in after all that had happened this night. Brot’an ignored Leesil and Chap’s threats and fixed only on Magiere.

She was still at a loss, and she was weakening under Leanâlhâm’s weight pulling down her sword arm. The tears on the girl’s cheeks had begun to dry, but her face was stained by pure fright. Why would Brot’an bring Osha, let alone Leanâlhâm, this far across the world?

Magiere had once made a promise to an anmaglâhk who’d been their guardian. She’d sworn to Sgäile, Leanâlhâm’s “uncle,” that whenever possible she would protect his quarter-blood niece. Sgäile had later sacrificed himself to guard Magiere and those with her. And here was Brot’an, one of less than a handful of shadow-grippers left in the world, a master among the Anmaglâhk.

Magiere forgot about everything but Leanâlhâm; the girl would not see more bloodshed tonight.

“Chap, stop it!” she demanded, and then louder. “Leesil, you back off!”