The Dog in the Dark Read online

  BY BARB AND J. C. HENDEE

  THE NOBLE DEAD SAGA—SERIES ONE

  DHAMPIR

  THIEF OF LIVES

  SISTER OF THE DEAD

  TRAITOR TO THE BLOOD

  REBEL FAY

  CHILD OF A DEAD GOD

  THE NOBLE DEAD SAGA—SERIES TWO

  IN SHADE AND SHADOW

  THROUGH STONE AND SEA

  OF TRUTH AND BEASTS

  THE NOBLE DEAD SAGA—SERIES THREE

  BETWEEN THEIR WORLDS

  THE DOG IN THE DARK

  ALSO BY BARB HENDEE

  THE VAMPIRE MEMORIES SERIES

  BLOOD MEMORIES

  HUNTING MEMORIES

  MEMORIES OF ENVY

  IN MEMORIES WE FEAR

  GHOST OF MEMORIES

  THE DOG IN THE DARK

  A NOVEL OF THE NOBLE DEAD

  BARB & J. C. HENDEE

  A ROC BOOK

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Barb and J. C. Hendee, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Hendee, Barb.

  The dog in the dark: a novel of the noble dead/Barb and J. C. Hendee.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-59862-7

  I. Hendee, J. C. II. Title.

  PS3608.E525D64 2013

  813'.6—dc23 2012021418

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Contents

  Other Books by BARB AND J. C. HENDEE

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  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’d
uivé must die. Do you understand?

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

  Chapter One

  “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—

  “Léshil? Magiere, wait!”

  At a lilting female voice calling out Leesil’s an’Cróan name, Magiere looked up the ship’s walkway.

  A slight young elven female stood at the ramp’s top. She wore the old cloak given to her by Wynn Hygeorht, a friend they’d all left behind in Calm Seatt. The hood’s folds crumpled across her shoulders, and the cloak’s split revealed a dusky maroon pullover. Both of these were obviously bits of human clothing scavenged along the way, like the unmanageable dark green skirt hanging all the way down to the toes of her felt boots.

  Leanâlhâm waved frantically; she bore a canvas pack slung over one shoulder. This was the liveliest that Magiere had seen the girl in the three days since they’d snuck out of Calm Seatt.

  “We’re not going anywhere . . . yet,” Magiere called back.

  As Leanâlhâm took a first step onto the ramp, a silver-gray wolf, almost bluish in the bright day, stepped to the rail’s opening.

  Chap was taller than any wolf, for he wasn’t truly one. His body was that of the majay-hì, descended from wolves of ancient times inhabited by the Fay during the supposedly mythical war at the end of the world’s Forgotten History. The descendants of those first Fay-born became the guardians of the an’Cróan elves, and had barred all but their people from the vast Elven Territories on the world’s far side. But Chap was different from even those.

  He was a Fay spirit, born years ago by his own choice into a majay-hì pup—a new Fay-born in the body of a Fay-descended being. He was Magiere and Leesil’s guardian and guide—and also an overbearing know-it-all.

  Immediately a third figure loomed at the walkway’s top. He was as much taller than a man as Chap was when compared to a wolf. This one’s long, coarse white-blond hair had darker streaks, a sign of age among the an’Cróan. He was deeply tan, with lines crinkling the corners of his mouth and of his large, amber-irised eyes. But the feature that stood out most was the four white scars—as if from claws—running at an angle down his forehead, through one high, slanted, feathery eyebrow, to skip over his right eye and reach his cheekbone.

  Neither Magiere nor Leesil could pronounce his full an’Cróan name. They’d shortened it to simply Brot’an.

  Among the Anmaglâhk, that caste of assassins who viewed themselves as guardians of the an’Cróan, he was one of a handful of “shadow-grippers.” These were the masters of the caste’s skills and ways. One other had been Leesil’s deceased grandmother, Eillean, whom he’d never met. But Brot’an no longer wore his caste’s garb of forest gray hooded cloak, vestment, pants, and felt boots. Instead the full hood of his dusky wool traveler’s cloak was thrown back over a weatherworn jerkin—more scavenged human garb, like Leanâlhâm’s. But there was a reason for his change of attire.

  Brot’an was at war with his own caste, but to Magiere he was still an anmaglâhk. That was as permanent as those scars on his face, and she glanced over at Leesil.

  Her husband’s features hardened at the sight of the anmaglâhk master still in their midst. The hatred on Leesil’s face was plain, cold, and focused, for Brot’an had once tricked him into killing a warlord and self-proclaimed monarch. This had ignited a war in Leesil’s birthland.

  Leanâlhâm started trotting down the ship’s ramp in haste, her too-long skirt flapping wildly at each thrust of her narrow feet.

  “There’s no hurry,” Magiere called out. “We’re not going anywhere until— Leanâlhâm, slow down!”

  Chap huffed sharply in warning and lunged after the girl. Leanâlhâm’s next hurried step came down on her skirt’s front hem, and she teetered.

  “Oh—oh!” she squeaked out.

  Chap quickly snagged her skirt from behind and set all four of his paws on the ramp’s surface. All that did was throw her more off balance as his claws grated on the ramp’s wood. Leanâlhâm’s pack swung off her shoulder and forward.

  Magiere started for the ramp’s base as Brot’an descended behind Chap. Leesil had barely slipped the chest off hi
s shoulder when Leanâlhâm cried out again.

  “Oh, no—no, majay-hì!”

  Leesil’s eyes opened wide—just before Leanâlhâm’s flying pack hit him in the gut. Gagging, he dropped the chest, and his arms wrapped around the pack as he buckled. Leanâlhâm’s skirt ripped in Chap’s teeth, and she careened headlong down the ramp in a tripping stumble. Chap tumbled backward with scraps of her skirt in his jaws, and he scrambled to get his footing. Brot’an grabbed for Chap from behind, but the dog snapped at him. Chap’s dislike of the shadow-gripper was twice Leesil’s, and Magiere tried to get in front of Leanâlhâm before . . .

  The girl shot face-first into the pack clutched against Leesil’s stomach.

  Leesil’s mouth gaped silently as his dark skin visibly paled. Both he and Leanâlhâm toppled backward, and Magiere had to duck a mix of flailing arms and packs. She made a grab for the girl’s cloak, but her two tangled companions came to a sudden halt against a great furred hulk.

  The large Northlander’s big hands under Leesil’s arms kept him from dropping onto his rump. Leanâlhâm slid off the pack and fell facedown at Leesil’s feet.

  Everyone around the dock stopped and stared.

  Leanâlhâm rolled over, holding her nose with one hand and whimpering. Whatever she rattled off in Elvish sounded as annoyed as it was pained. Before Magiere could help the girl up, Leesil let out a gurgling groan and clamped a hand over his mouth. At the muffled gags coming through Leesil’s hand, the big furred Northlander dropped him.

  Leesil’s backside hit the dock. He instantly scrambled on all fours around the big man’s heavy boots and headed for the dock’s far edge. One sailor coiling a rope backed into a barrel and pulled his feet up, and Leesil flopped down, head hanging over the dock’s edge.

  The problem was that because of his seasickness, he hadn’t yet eaten anything this day. The noise of retching dry heaves made Magiere’s stomach roll, even with all those eyes upon her and her companions. All five of them had left their homelands and crossed an ocean and then a continent in their separate ways to come halfway across a world—and they needed to get on with their task as quietly as possible.