Between Their Worlds_A Novel of the Noble Dead

by Barb Hendee

  “Easy enough,” Leesil whispered.

  Brot’an didn’t respond, and Leesil carefully gripped the door handle. He twisted slowly, and it didn’t budge. He pressed harder, and then again with more of his weight . . . to no effect.

  There was a reason why they’d found no sages about. The place was locked.

  Dropping to his knees, he took a closer look. The door was heavy, but the light from the lamp above exposed a simple lock plate. The only problem would be light spilling out the door once it was opened and thereby drawing attention.

  He glanced up, about to tell Brot’an to remove the crystal once the door had been unlocked, and then noticed a glint above the lamp. Something was higher up, near the ceiling, and it didn’t look exactly like another crystal.

  It was set in a pewter oval like a bulky pendant, though he couldn’t make out how it clung to the wall. It wasn’t cut in facets; this “crystal” was almost round or domed, with perhaps half of it sunk into the pewter. He couldn’t be certain, but it appeared the pewter frame was etched with a pattern or maybe tiny markings.

  Leesil turned back to the task at hand.

  “Take the lamp’s crystal out,” he told Brot’an. “Once I have the door unlocked, tuck it away so it doesn’t betray us. We might need it later.”

  He had no reluctance at stealing from the guild, not after they’d locked up Wynn.

  Brot’an shook his head. “Let me unlock the door.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  Reaching behind, Leesil pulled out his shirt’s tail and removed a long, slender box from inside the back of his shirt. He set it on the stone floor before opening it.

  There was empty space within that had once held his own lost bone knife and two white metal stilettos. He folded back a panel on the lid’s inside and revealed an array of slim tools of dark metal. Most were about the size of a noblewoman’s hatpin. Choosing two, he studied the lock as Brot’an crouched, glowing crystal already in hand.

  “Where did you get that box?” Brot’an asked.

  Leesil had no intention of sharing his youth with Brot’an or explaining that the box had been a gift from his mother the day he turned seventeen. That was a birthday he would much rather forget. Without answering, Leesil went to work on the lock.

  Chane fought to stifle panic when he realized he could not move.

  The hand that had clutched his shirt and cloak and pulled him into the wall let go as soon as he felt air again on his face. But more than half of his body remained trapped in stone.

  He could not turn his head; the back of his skull was held fast. With only his eyes, he looked wildly about, but the room was too dark even for him to see much.

  It appeared to be a gathering place, a small room of arranged benches facing toward the small chamber’s left side. In the right far corner was a closed door, and from what he remembered, it must lead out into the main passage along the keep’s front. But that was all he could see without being able to turn his head.

  Except for a figure standing ahead of him in the dark little seminar room, and it certainly was not Ore-Locks.

  Its robe was so dark it appeared almost black, though Chane knew it was midnight blue. The garment covered a slight form that reached up with one narrow hand to pull back a matching cowl. The other hand came out of a pocket, bearing the harsh light of a cold-lamp crystal.

  Premin Frideswida Hawes appeared before Chane.

  Every time he grew warier of her skills, she became even more dangerous than he had imagined. She watched him silently from well beyond arm’s length, her bristling gray hair and hazel eyes glittering in the crystal’s light. It did not take Chane long to realize what had happened.

  She had not gone south down the main passage. Instead, she had slipped into this room and waited for him to draw near in heading toward the entrance. Somehow she had sensed him enough to seize and pull him through—no, into—the wall. The only things he could move now were his face, his eyes, and most of his left hand.

  Chane could not remember ever being this helpless.

  Panic and then rage began to awaken the sleeping beast within him—and it rose in a frenzy, wanting to break free. As his senses sharpened further, he knew his eyes would lose all color; his teeth would begin to shift, exposing fangs; and in the beast’s panic, he could not stop himself from trying to pull free.

  All of his hunger feeding him strength did no good.

  Still, Hawes studied him like some creature easily captured for her chill curiosity. Though her jaw was clenched tight, her expression remained otherwise unreadable.

  Chane fought to stop the change but could not, and surely she saw all of it. He was helpless against himself and helpless against her. And he hated both conditions, but he remained silent.

  Shouting would only make things worse, endangering Wynn and Ore-Locks, should they hear him and come running. Even if he were about to be finished off, here and now, he would do nothing to betray Wynn.

  Hawes raised one hand, and her fingers twitched once, as if making a quick gesture.

  “What are you?” she demanded.

  Perhaps it was the sound of her voice in this silent room that caught Chane off guard. Was this a chance to distract her, to keep her here for a while? In that at least, he might keep one obstacle out of Wynn’s way. He bit down, trying to force the beast within back into its cell.

  With a sense of hysteria, he wondered if telling her the truth would stun—rivet—her all the more.

  To his shame, he was afraid. If he gave an answer she did not care for, she might easily shove him back inside the wall, not knowing how to finish him. She could leave him there, forever unseen, forever undead in a tomb no one would find, let alone try to open.

  “I told you once,” he rasped, trying to keep calm. “I am the one who keeps Wynn safe.”

  “That is what you choose to be . . . not what you are.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Hawes went silent for a while. “Did Wynn truly find Bäalâle Seatt?”

  The sudden shock of her question numbed the last of Chane’s cunning. How had the premin even known what he and Wynn were up to the last time they had left this place? He had never been a skilled judge of people—only because he didn’t care about anyone besides himself and Wynn, for the most part. Something in Hawes’s tone and her stillness—and now that question—left him wondering.

  Had he had misinterpreted what was happening here? Did Hawes genuinely want answers and see this as the only way to get them?

  “Yes,” Chane answered.

  He saw her reaction, though it was only the barest, briefest widening of her hazel eyes. Hawes wanted the truth for the sake of it, so unlike her counterparts on the Premin Council. If he was going save Wynn—if not himself—his only chance was to answer her.

  “What were you seeking there?” Hawes asked.

  “A device . . . an orb of stone . . . used by the Ancient Enemy. Wynn believes there are more, and she is determined to find them before minions of the Enemy do so first.” At this, Chane couldn’t stop, but bitterness leaked into his maimed voice. “She has done so on her own, as no one here sees fit to help her!”

  Hawes blinked, but her eyes remained fixed on him. The motion was too much like that of an owl at rest, eyeing a mouse. But it had been a reaction, perhaps a startling one for this premin.

  “Not entirely true,” she replied. “What purpose do these . . . orbs . . . serve?”

  Hawes, like all on the council, must have read Wynn’s journal accounts of what had happened in the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks. She knew at least of the first orb’s discovery. Did she also know of the one Chane had found in Bäalâle Seatt, the one Wynn had handed over to Ore-Locks?

  “I do not know,” he answered. “The few who might are desperate to claim them, so I assume they have great power.”

  “The few?” she repeated sharply.

  Almost instantly, without the sound of a step, she closed on him . . . close en
ough that he could have grabbed her if only he could have gotten free of the wall.

  “The one called Most Aged Father among the elves of the Farlands,” Chane answered. “Minions of the Enemy . . . perhaps some of the elves of this continent . . . and Domin il’Sänke.”

  Hawes’s eyes narrowed as she hissed, “Ghassan il’Sänke?”

  The reaction confirmed one thing: Chane had warned Wynn more than once against trusting that Suman sage. That Hawes was shaken, even openly angered, by the foreign domin’s awareness of the orbs did not mean she was any more trustworthy.

  What did Hawes want with the orbs?

  Chane tried to turn away from the subject.

  “Wynn has been forced to fight this out on her own!” he accused, suddenly unable to contain his anger. “Except for Shade and myself! Your council has been the most consistent obstacle in the way of the only one who has tried to do anything worthwhile in this.”

  Hawes blinked slowly again, watching him. She did not offer any defense of her council.

  Chane suspected the premin had already known half the answers to her questions. Was she simply testing him?

  “Why did you break in here?” she asked. “To steal her away?”

  Chane hesitated, uncertain. Would the truth cause Hawes to rouse the guards to check on Wynn? Hawes looked almost tense as she waited for his answer.

  “Yes.”

  Premin Hawes once again became the cold, calculating observer as she stared at him.

  Fear washed through Chane that he had said too much.

  CHAPTER 17

  WYNN CREPT ALONG THE barracks behind Ore-Locks until they reached the courtyard’s eastern corner. Ore-Locks pushed her back as he inched out along the main building’s wall. He peered toward the gatehouse tunnel and finally straightened to wave her forward. There was no one else in sight, and Wynn scurried after him to the keep’s main double doors.

  They slipped inside, finding themselves in the empty entryway where the passage leading to the library’s center doors met the main corridor along the inside of the building’s front. Wynn cringed a little at the cold lamp above the door, which exposed them too much.

  “We are to meet Chane inside the library’s southeast door,” Ore-Locks whispered.

  “This way,” Wynn answered, turning right and stepping past him.

  Almost immediately, his large hand clenched the back of her cloak. He pulled her one-handed back behind himself, as if she weighed no more than a puppy.

  “Stop doing that!” she growled.

  “Shush!” he whispered, and then headed onward.

  Trying to be quiet, they quickly made their way to where the next left turn led to the library’s southeast door. Once around the corner, they nearly ran for that door. Wynn exhaled in relief once they stood before it. This was going much more smoothly than she’d anticipated, and she gripped the door’s handle and twisted it.

  It turned only a fraction of what it should and clacked softly to a stop.

  “No!” she rasped through her teeth.

  “Shush!” Ore-Locks warned again.

  Wynn grabbed the handle with both hands and tried to twist it again, and still the door wouldn’t open. Her frustration turned to anger.

  That damn Rodian—this had to be his doing. It wasn’t enough to lock her up. He had to lock up the whole keep.

  She braced her feet, prepared to heave on the handle with all of her little body. Ore-Locks’s hand quickly closed over both of hers, and she glared at him. He only glared back. He was much better at it.

  Too much noise, he mouthed.

  Wynn stared at the door. Perhaps Ore-Locks could slip through the stone wall to get inside. Then again, he couldn’t take her with him, as he wasn’t as skilled in that as his brethren. Even Chane had difficulty in walking through stone with Ore-Locks, and Chane was dead.

  “Chane could not have opened it, either—or it would be open,” Ore-Locks whispered. “We should head back and find another route, as planned.”

  But he appeared hesitant as he glanced back up the passage.

  If Wynn understood right, Chane would’ve left a glove outside the main doors if he couldn’t secure this path. There had been no glove. So where was Chane? She waved to Ore-Locks as she stepped back up the passage. Ore-Locks quickly followed, not letting her get ahead of him.

  “There are two other entrances,” she whispered. “One to the north and one straight in from the entrance. Perhaps he got in through one of those and hasn’t had time to let us know somehow.”

  Ore-Locks shook his head, his red ponytail switching across his broad shoulders.

  “Maybe,” he answered. “We will check the center doors first, as they are nearest. Just remember that I cannot be seen by anyone but you.”

  A part of her wanted to tell him to flee on his own, straight through the walls, now that he’d gotten her out of her room. After all she had put Ore-Locks through in their hunt for Bäalâle, she wasn’t about to have him suffer in being arrested with her. But for as far as this plan had gone, she doubted he would willingly leave her.

  That he’d come to help her at all, at Chane’s request, left Wynn even more guilt ridden over the secret she’d kept from a tortured man who was a keeper of the honored dead of Dhredze Seatt. And stranger still . . .

  It appeared Chane had a friend in Ore-Locks. For as little as was known or believed in Wynn’s land concerning the undead, Ore-Locks, as a stonewalker, with their way of life, should hold any being like Chane as an enemy.

  As they reached the passage’s end, Ore-Locks held out his free arm, blocking Wynn’s way. He set his iron staff’s butt silently on the floor stones and peered a long while around the corner toward the far entryway. Finally, he hefted his staff and nodded to her.

  Wynn took a step, and Ore-Locks immediately halted. Before she could ask, he grabbed her arm, hauling her back around the corner as he retreated. She frowned at his sudden panic, for she hadn’t seen anyone out in the main passage.

  “There’s no one there,” she whispered.

  “Footsteps,” he countered.

  Wynn heard nothing, but she watched Ore-Locks’s eyes wander. He lowered his head, and at first it looked like his eyes half closed, or he was looking at his feet. Wynn did the same, studying his great boots planted firmly on stone, and then she remembered . . .

  Stone and earth were everything to the dwarven people. They lived upon and within it, even listened to it, and more so for a stonewalker. Ore-Locks could hear—feel—sound through stone in touching it. He had never been wrong in this in the brief time Wynn had known him.

  “The weight of man,” Ore-Locks whispered, his eyes still half-closed. “Wearing boots . . . somewhere north of us . . . inside this building . . . and closing.”

  Wynn tensed and looked toward the corner and some four feet of the main passage still in view. A man wearing boots hard enough for that faint vibration to carry? Was one of the guards inside, walking sentry? Or was it Rodian, and that’s why he’d disappeared from the courtyard?

  “He is coming toward the front passage!” Ore-Locks whispered.

  Wynn jerked once on his sleeve and ducked out into the main passage before he could catch her. She turned southward, hurrying farther down, away from the entrance and all other ways into the library.

  Hawes whirled around, away from Chane, and went still. He followed her intense gaze to the chamber’s closed door. With his senses still widened, he made out two sets of hurried footfalls—one light, one heavy—rushing away down the front passage beyond that door.

  Hawes stood there too long. Obviously she had heard those faint footsteps, though he was not certain how. His fear of her began to fade as another concern took its place.

  “Wynn needs help,” he said, breaking the long silence, “more than I can give. The weight of it all is too heavy for her.”

  Hawes stood there a little longer before her head alone turned, like some gray predatory owl noticing him again. Without a wor
d, she closed the distance between them and grabbed his hand that protruded from the wall.

  Chane panicked, fearing that with a mere touch she would entomb him in stone. She was slight, and yet it had been easy for her to jerk him halfway through the wall.

  Hawes whispered something so brief and quiet that Chane did not catch it. She pulled lightly upon his hand.

  Suddenly, he felt as if he were encased in mud or at least something softer and more pliable than stone. He lunged forward before that sensation vanished, and as soon as he was free of the wall, he sidestepped away from Hawes.

  Once again he had lowered himself to ask for her help. As yet she had not said no. Much as he did not wish to damage a potential alliance, he was not letting her touch him again.

  She turned her back on him, as if this meant nothing to her, and walked away.

  “Remain here until I return,” she said.

  She cracked the chamber’s door enough to peek out, and then widened the opening, leaning out to look the other way along the passage.

  “Premin,” a low male voice called from outside.

  Hawes’s head instantly rotated to the right. She pulled the door wider, causing it to creak loudly, and then stepped out and shut it.

  Chane was alone, still too lost in confusion to even rush to the door.

  Wynn scurried southward along the main passage with Ore-Locks right behind her. Her eyes were on the passage’s far right end and the door into the initiates’ lecture hall. It was one place no one might look, and at least it had another door in its rear, leading elsewhere. Then she heard those more distant footsteps echoing down the corridor from behind her.

  Any moment, some guard or even Rodian himself would step into the main passage’s northward end. And she panicked even more.

  A loud creak filled the passage, much closer behind than those footsteps.

  Wynn’s breath caught as she looked frantically about. She heard Ore-Locks stop, and she turned to look behind. With no choice, she grabbed the nearest door handle on the passage’s left side.