It was the journal.
“Lapdogs!” Cuirin’nên’a spat. “You disgrace a holiday to do his bidding?”
Leanâlhâm was utterly confused. Anmaglâhk protected their people. Why had these two come to destroy her home?
“We are here to serve,” the one with the journal answered. “You will not interfere with our purpose. Step aside, or be proven the traitor that you are.”
Leanâlhâm’s gaze shifted as Grandfather took a step forward. She had never seen him so angry.
“True guardians do not turn on their people,” he accused. “Leave my home and everything in it at once—or face sanction before the elders’ council of the clans.”
The second anmaglâhk, slightly shorter than the first, had eyes so lightly colored that they were nearly yellow. Neither reacted to Grandfather’s demand.
“Step aside,” the first one repeated, tucking the journal into his tunic.
Leanâlhâm grew fearful amid confusion. No one spoke to a clan elder this way. No anmaglâhk was above the people’s ways, not even Most Aged Father.
Cuirin’nên’a became a sudden blur.
Leanâlhâm blinked in a flinch.
When her eyes opened, Léshil’s mother had crossed the entire chamber. The shorter anmaglâhk stepped out to cut her off, and they tangled in a flurry of limbs. It was so rapid that Leanâlhâm could not follow any one movement.
The other anmaglâhk bolted straight for the doorway.
Leanâlhâm lost sight of the room as Grandfather sidestepped in front of the doorway. Almost instantly he was gone, knocked to the floor. The anmaglâhk rushed straight at her, and she froze.
He slammed her chest with one palm.
She went spinning, toppling outside the tree’s entrance. The ground rushed up, and she hit it on her left side. The strike had already taken her breath, and the impact made it worse. She fought to breathe, trying to get up, and then Grandfather stumbled out of their home.
His expression was dark with rage, and he had barely cleared the drape when Leanâlhâm heard a commanding shout.
“Gleannéohkân’thva, no!”
Grandfather did not heed Cuirin’nên’a and rushed by toward the forest’s edge. Leanâlhâm then remembered the strange chirps heard out in the forest. A wave of fear rushed through her.
“Grandfather!” she gasped out, struggling to her feet.
There was no sign of the anmaglâhk who had struck her. There was only a brief sound like someone whipping a stick through the air. And it cut off instantly.
Grandfather halted short of the forest’s edge, and Leanâlhâm swallowed in relief.
All was quiet. Not even the sound of a struggle rose out of her home. Grandfather took a small step back in retreat. He began to fall.
His back hit the turf, his eyes wide, and they did not blink when his head bounced on impact. A short arrow stood erect from the center of his chest.
Leanâlhâm screamed, the sound ripping from her throat as she rushed in.
No matter how she shouted at him or rubbed his face, he would not answer. His unblinking eyes stared upward. She felt no breath from him and grew numb.
Leanâlhâm did not twitch when Cuirin’nên’a suddenly crouched beside her. The woman was stained in spatters of red ... and a blood-drenched stiletto was in her narrow hand. Leanâlhâm looked back only once.
No one else came out of the draped doorway.
She looked down at Grandfather, the last of those who truly cared for her. This could not be real.
“Why?” she whispered.
Cuirin’nên’a did not answer.
In confusion Leanâlhâm grabbed her grandfather’s tunic and tried to drag him toward their home. She could not leave him here, but she barely moved him at all. A slender tan hand closed around her wrist, and something broke inside Leanâlhâm.
“No!”
She released her hold on Grandfather and struck out at Léshil’s mother.
Cuirin’nên’a’s head snaked aside, and Leanâlhâm’s small fist passed harmlessly away. She was jerked to her feet, and the grip on her wrist released briefly. Cuirin’nên’a’s bloody hand clamped over her mouth.
“Quiet,” she hissed. “We run now!”
Before Leanâlhâm could say a word, she was pulled into the forest at a wild pace, and Cuirin’nên’a dragged her on and on. For how long Leanâlhâm did not know. Everyone who loved her had been taken from her. She wept in flight and was unable to stop, even when Léshil’s mother halted and pulled her up short.
There was a large redwood almost as great as the tree homes of the enclave. Though no Shaper among the people had guided the growth of this tree, there was a natural cavelike hollow between two of its huge roots mounding the forest floor.
Cuirin’nên’a glanced all around. “We are unseen. Get inside.”
Leanâlhâm did not understand.
“In!” Cuirin’nên’a ordered, pushing Leanâlhâm down between the roots.
She shrank back into the dark and dank hollow. The notion of being left here without anyone, even Léshil’s mother, was too much.
“Do not leave me!” she begged.
Again Cuirin’nên’a did not answer. She dropped the stained stiletto and began tearing her own gown apart. She shredded it into strips, which she bound around her legs, arms, and torso. Taking up mulch and earth from the forest floor, she smeared it over her whole lithe body, then dropped to her back to writhe and cover it as well.
“Please,” Leanâlhâm whispered.
Cuirin’nên’a rolled up to a crouch and retrieved the stiletto; leaves and soil now clung in the blood upon it. She wiped the blade clean across her thigh. All of her unsettling beauty was masked, like some creature rising from the dead leaves and needles of the forest floor. All that remained clearly visible were her alluring, beautiful eyes ... coldly fixed upon Leanâlhâm.
“I must get the journal,” the woman whispered.
Leanâlhâm did not know why such a thing mattered. Panic rose at the idea of being left truly alone. She tried to crawl out, and Cuirin’nên’a rushed in on her.
“Stay—and do not step into the open!”
“Please ... no.”
Léshil’s mother grew so still. Her face was too masked by smears to make out her expression. Only her eyes appeared to soften.
“I will return,” she whispered. “Stay where I can find you.”
She lunged off through the forest. No sound carried from a single footfall as she flitted from shadow to shadow and was gone.
Cowering between the roots of the great redwood, Leanâlhâm pulled her knees against her chest. She clamped a hand over her abdomen and pressed the bottle of her uncle’s ashes against her stomach. All she could do in the fear that rose over her grief was to watch the trees and wonder whether the murdering anmaglâhk were near.
To know fear of them was a madness as great as her love for her uncle, Sgäilsheilleache.
And somehow all the horrors of this day had to do with Wynn’s journal.
Somehow Brot’ân’duivé and Cuirin’nên’a were at odds with their caste—and they had gotten Grandfather involved. Even Osha had been taken from Leanâlhâm by the greimasg’äh. Because of Brot’ân’duivé and Cuirin’nên’a, Leanâlhâm was wholly alone in a world with no one to love her, to protect her even from those who were supposed to protect her people.
Afternoon turned to night, and still Cuirin’nên’a did not return.
Leanâlhâm’s thoughts grew dull and tangled. She began to piece together all those times she had been sent away ... whenever the greimasg’äh came to visit. How many times had she returned from little errands she had been sent on, only to find Grandfather whispering with Brot’ân’duivé? And that had only increased after Léshil’s mother came to live with them.