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.