Before he could glance back, the anmaglâhk in the heart-root chamber came through the opening and collided with him. The impact drove him back as he grabbed the blade thrust at his throat. Its edge bit into his palm. Before he could counterstrike, his opponent grabbed his other arm at the elbow and tried to puncture the joint with a thumb.
Brot’ân’duivé met his opponent’s eyes.
There was no fear of death, not even in facing him, in this one. This was a true anmaglâhk but with a twisted purpose. He would willingly die to kill one of his own simply because Father had told him this was right.
Brot’ân’duivé had long mourned the decline of his caste and the corruption of it by their patriarch. It was no longer defiance or even hate that drove him. There was only overwhelming grief in looking into the amber eyes of a fanatic.
He saw no sacrifice and service to the people in those eyes. He saw only the death of Anmaglâhk virtue, murdered by Most Aged Father.
And he heard the one who had dropped the bow coming in on his right. It did not matter whether he died, so long as he ended this here and now.
Brot’ân’duivé slammed his forehead into the fanatic’s face, and the man’s head lashed back. Brot’ân’duivé twisted aside the stiletto blade he still gripped, and it bit deeper into his palm. Wheeling away, he kicked into the knee of the archer charging in on his right. As that one stumbled, Brot’ân’duivé rammed his stiletto through the throat of the fanatic and then slung his impaled opponent at the archer.
He put aside all else, exposing his back as he looked into the heart-root chamber, still gripping the hilt of his own stiletto with one hand and the blade of a dead anmaglâhk’s in the other.
Not the slightest trace of fear haunted Most Aged Father’s milky eyes.
Brot’ân’duivé knew he had failed on one count. The journal was not here; it was beyond his reach. It would not matter if someone else put the journal before the council of elders, for he would silence the one voice that could truly twist Wynn Hygeorht’s words.
Most Aged Father smiled.
This was one of the only moments in which Brot’ân’duivé had ever truly hesitated, and he would regret it for the rest of his life. The entrance to the dark wood of the heart-root trembled like a mouth made of flesh.
It snapped closed before Brot’ân’duivé’s eyes.
“No!” he shouted, and slapped his bloodied hand against the wood as he dropped one blade. Even the pain of that did not break through the shock.
“Do not move!” Cuirin’nên’a shouted.
Only that violent command broke through to him. He turned to see the last archer, the last anmaglâhk, rising as he pushed off the corpse of his ally. Both other archers lay upon the chamber floor; both with arrows dead-center in their chests. The feathers of those arrows were not those of an anmaglâhk.
This one remaining anmaglâhk, with the lower half of his face still obscured by a wrap, continued backing away to the main chamber’s far side. But his eyes were focused on someone else.
Brot’ân’duivé followed the path of that gaze.
Cuirin’nên’a crept in around him with a stiletto in her right hand and the feathers of an anmaglâhk arrow protruding from below her left shoulder.
“What part of ‘run’ did you not understand?” she hissed at him, and then looked beyond him to the heart-root.
Brot’ân’duivé could not look at it again. Astonishment passed quickly across Cuirin’nên’a’s face and was replaced by a trace of anguish.
“We are undone,” she whispered. “You have ruined and exposed us. There is now no doubt that we stand against him.”
He said nothing. There was only the need of this moment to which he could attend. They must flee and warn all those who stood with them to go deeper into hiding, and Cuirin’nên’a was wounded.
Brot’ân’duivé turned away, reaching for her, but she lifted her blade to point the stiletto at the last anmaglâhk backed against the far wall.
“I know your eyes, Mähk’an’ehk!” she said. “Do not follow us ... and you may live a little longer.”
Brot’ân’duivé pulled her away, and, leaping over Juan’yâre’s slumped form, they fled up the stairs.
There was no one outside in the green between the great oak and those who ringed it. He bolted north, leading the way deep into the forest and putting as much distance as possible between them and Crijheäiche. Later he was unsure how far they had run when he heard Cuirin’nên’a stumble behind him.
Slowing, he forced her to rest, hidden beneath the low branches of a fir tree while he backtracked to make certain they were not pursued. Returning, he knelt beside her to inspect the arrow she had taken in defending him.
“What did you think, if anything?” she asked. “That you could break in there, into his home ... and kill him? Why do so with so many present? Even you could not have reached past them to him in such a space.”
It had not occurred to him until then that she had not seen what he had. When he told her of anmaglâhk stepping out of the walls like spirits, she only stared at him.
“And what were you thinking,” he added, “when you killed an anmaglâhk in Gleannéohkân’thva’s home?”
She glanced away.
Brot’ân’duivé sighed. The situations were not truly comparable, for she had probably had little choice—unlike him. But there was still the question of the sentinels hidden like greimasg’äh in the shadows of the walls.
“How could we ... at least you ... not have known this?” she asked, as if knowing his thoughts.
Brot’ân’duivé had no answers for her. Most Aged Father was too long-lived. It appeared that time and the tree of his home allowed him to do more than thrive beyond his fair share of years.
“It is done,” he said, “and we have killed our own, regardless of the fact that they are counted as enemies. Any uncovered dissident, anmaglâhk or otherwise, will suffer for that as much as we will ... if we are caught.” He paused. “And I may also have killed a Covârleasa.”
“Juan’yâre still breathes,” she replied flatly. “I checked him on my way in to make certain.”
Brot’ân’duivé raised an eyebrow.
“I left him alive for the fear he may spread,” she explained before he asked. “The dead do not spread that as well as the terrified living. I knew what you attempted before I entered. Juan’yâre, sycophant that he is, will know fear in that Father could not protect him ... from us.” Cuirin’nên’a looked up at him. “And that lackey will chatter,” she added, her voice turning bitter. “So will Mähk’an’ehk. Let them fear us even in failure. For the sake of the others we have now exposed to open persecution, let them flinch at every shadow in the silence.”
Brot’ân’duivé grew still, watching Cuirin’nên’a glare off into the dark.
The war in silence and in shadow had begun this night, yet she thought of those she was born to protect. Like his lost Eillean, she thought of her people, and in that she was her mother’s daughter. For all of his failures this night, he could not have had greater pride in her if she had been his daughter as well.
Brot’ân’duivé turned his attention to Cuirin’nên’a’s wound and peeled away layers of shredded and earth-stained cloth. The arrow had gone through but, judging by its angle, had only pierced flesh and not bone. Gripping the shaft’s front close to her skin, he snapped off the protruding point at her back and jerked out the shaft all in one movement. She barely flinched.
“I will dress it with moss and try to stop the bleeding,” he said.