Барб Хенди: Dog in the Dark

An overly tall, slender woman walked out the southern gates of the city of Calm Seatt. She made her way in a slow, measured pace toward the roadside trees that led out among the open fields and farms. The hood of her forest gray cloak was up and forward, but a sleepless night had left strands of her white-blond hair dangling to waft in the breeze. She pushed those strands back inside her hood, exposing one slightly pointed ear.

Any who might have peered into that hood would have paused at the sight of slanted oversized eyes with large amber irises in a darkly tanned face too narrow to be human. They would have thought her one of the Lhoin’na, the elves of this continent, but her home was half a world away in a place that humans there called the Elven Territories.

Dänvârfij—Fated Music—had forgone the usual forest gray face wrap always worn by her caste. No one here would know her as one of the an’Cróan, an elven people of another continent. She shared leadership of a team of the Anmaglâhk, guardians of her people, though others would call them spies and assassins. They had traveled across the world for nearly a year in relentless pursuit of a purpose given by their caste’s own patriarch, Aoishenis-Ahâre—Most Aged Father.

And tonight Dänvârfij had utterly failed at that purpose.

She could not blame her team—only herself—as she knelt before the branch-bare base of a maple tree. Her hand trembled as she reached under her tunic’s front and withdrew an oval of smooth tawny wood no bigger than her palm. It was the last and only word-wood left to her team, grown by elven Shapers from Most Aged Father’s own tree home half a world away.

Dänvârfij reached out and pressed the word-wood against the maple’s trunk as she whispered.

“Father?”

This was what all devoted anmaglâhk called him.

I am here, Daughter.

Most Aged Father’s voice filled Dänvârfij’s thoughts with an instant of welcomed calm. Even this quickly dissipated under the shame of what she had to tell him.

“Our quarry has escaped,” she said. “I have failed.”

For so long, no replying voice filled her thoughts. Each time she thought to ask whether he was still there for her, she faltered.

Escaped how?

“By ship,” she answered quickly. “They managed to elude us. A human questioned at the port revealed they are bound for a place called the Isle of Wrêdelyd.”

Again long silence raked her nerves raw, stirring more shame.

How many remain of your team?

“We are now six, but Rhysís is injured.”

Can he travel?

“Soon.”

Do not delay. Leave him behind if necessary.

She almost counseled against this but remained silent.

Your purpose is unchanged. Find a ship and follow your quarry. Retrieve the artifact or its known location from the monster ... Magiere. Torture her, and Léshil, for anything regarding the artifact’s purpose. Then kill them and all who are with them. No one else, especially the traitor, must ever learn of this device, whatever it might be.

“Yes, Father.”

And regardless of anything else, the traitor must die.

Dänvârfij faltered. The thought of again facing one of the few remaining greimasg’äh—a “shadow-gripper” as one of the most skilled among her caste—was something neither she nor those with her wanted anymore. Half of those who had first set out with her had died by this greimasg’äh’s hand in the past year.

Brot’ân’duivé must die. Do you understand?

It was too long before Dänvârfij mustered the calm to answer. “Yes, Father.”

“This is going to be more trouble than I’d hoped,” Magiere said as she stepped off the ship’s lowered walkway and halted upon the immense dock.

Everywhere about the Isle of Wrêdelyd’s great port were ships of every size. Southward, the various riggings of so many vessels marred the skyline like tangled layers of giant rope spiderwebs. Numerous sailors, dockhands, hawkers, teamsters, and warehouse laborers hurried about. Everyday people and merchants crowded the shoreline and piers visible between the hulking vessels. Some of the people were dressed in strange clothes she’d never seen, even during her short stay in Malourné’s capital of Calm Seatt on the mainland.

Amid all this, Magiere and her companions needed to quickly find another ship heading far south down the mainland’s coast to the Suman Empire. But which, if any, would be making that long journey soon and willing to take passengers on short notice?

“Oh, seven hells!” someone growled behind her. “Why does nothing we try ever turn out to be easy?”

Magiere glanced back as her husband halted at the bottom of the ship’s walkway.

Leesil stood staring about the port with their travel chest on one shoulder, over the straps of his pack. There were even more ships anchored offshore.

All Magiere could do was sigh. At least if he could complain so dramatically, his handful of days being seasick on the voyage from Calm Seatt hadn’t worn him too much.

“I didn’t know it would be this big,” Magiere answered. “We need to find a ship leaving soon.”

Leesil grumbled something under his breath, and she shot him a scowl over her shoulder. But even after their years together, she still marveled at the sight of him.

With oblong ears less peaked than those of a full-blooded elf, he shared other traits with his mother’s people, the an’Cróan of the eastern continent. Beneath a ratty green scarf on his head, strands of silky white-blond hair hung down around his narrow tan face, which still glistened from sick sweats during the passage. Beardless like the full-blooded male elves, he was average height for a human, though short by an’Cróan standards, unlike Magiere, who was nearly as tall as he was.

Leesil’s amber-irised eyes, so slightly slanted, looked up and down the broad dock.

“Are we going into the port or not?” he asked as one of his feathery blond eyebrows arched. “I’d like solid ground under my feet for at least a day!”

At that, a rough-featured and bearded hulk stalled in his march up the dock. The big man glanced at Leesil and then at Magiere, as did a few sailors busily coiling ropes. The bearded man was dressed in a hide and fur jerkin, pants, and a fur cape, and was obviously one of the coastal Northlanders. Magiere had learned of them in her time farther north, in her travels toward the icy Wastes.

She turned her attention back to matters at hand.

The late-spring day was overly warm, and her shirt clung uncomfortably beneath her studded leather hauberk. Pushing back dampening locks of black hair, she knew from the stares of those around her that their bloodred tint probably showed under the bright sun. Worse, her overly pale skin stung in the glare.

Leesil also looked too warm in his old scarred-up hauberk of iron rings. While Magiere wore a hand-and-a-half-long falchion sheathed on her hip and a white metal battle dagger at her back beneath her cloak, a pair of strange-looking winged punching blades hung in their sheaths from Leesil’s belt, strapped down against his thighs.

She was concerned about his being so seasick, but as much as she loved him, and with all that they faced ahead, his moaning and griping over the past few days were getting to her. They faced a real urgency in finding passage off this island, for they could still be tracked and followed here. Leesil knew this already. She sighed once more, releasing tension before it got to her. She was about to assure Leesil—again—that they’d soon get ashore, when—