Between Their Worlds_A Novel of the Noble Dead

by Barb Hendee

  “In here!” she whispered.

  Ducking through the door, she found that Ore-Locks had already appeared inside—straight through the wall—and she realized they were in one of the smaller classrooms. She closed the door as Ore-Locks inhaled, held it, and shook his head.

  Wynn slumped against the side wall beside the door, panting from fright. For the moment, they were hidden, but again they’d been cut off from escape. And where in the world was Chane?

  Rodian’s footfalls echoed down the northern passage. As he reached the turn into the front main corridor along the building, he saw someone lean out of a door just beyond the entryway. The figure was too dark to make out beyond the entryway’s dim light, but he knew who it must be.

  “Premin,” he called.

  Hawes turned her head, her cowl now down, and looked straight at him. She stepped out and closed the door, walking up the passage to pause and wait in the entryway.

  “Is everything well?” she asked as he reached her.

  He looked past her to the door she had closed. “Is something amiss in there?”

  “I mislaid one of my notebooks earlier today. I thought to check for it while looking around.”

  His gaze dropped to her empty hands.

  “It must be somewhere else,” she added. “I will have to retrace my steps in the morning.”

  “Did you find your wayward initiate?”

  Hawes shook her head slightly, only once, and turned for the main doors, reaching for a handle. “I may have been . . . misinformed.”

  Rodian wasn’t fooled by this maneuver amid their conversation; she was trying to draw him out of here and back into the courtyard. He had a choice to make quickly: either see what she’d been up to or follow her and dig further into what she was hiding. With regret, he chose the latter.

  Hawes was already outside, holding open the door. To both their surprise, as Rodian stepped out, Dorian came running toward them across the courtyard.

  “Premin!” he began in a rush. “You must . . .”

  At the sight of Rodian, Dorian’s voice failed.

  Of course it did, and Rodian simply stared, daring the young metaologer to finish. These sages would hardly allow their smallest inner workings or secrets to reach his ears or eyes. His anger began rising.

  Dorian backed up in silence, still looking at Hawes. Rodian turned on the premin as well, ignoring the reticent young metaologer.

  “I assume something else is now amiss,” he said, not bothering to make a question of it.

  “All appears to be as it should,” she answered. “At least for immediate concerns. My apologies for taking your time. I will leave you to attend to your own concerns, as I . . .”

  She paused, glanced once at Dorian, and then looked casually about the courtyard.

  “I should see Domin High-Tower,” she finished, “concerning distribution of stores that arrived this evening.”

  “At this time of night?” Rodian asked.

  “He is often up late in his study.”

  The premin’s casual manner was as much out of place as her earlier mad dash across the courtyard to reach the main building. Rodian looked directly at Dorian as he spoke to Hawes.

  “Exactly what did you mean earlier when you told this one to stop and—”

  “Captain!”

  Lúcan’s shout jarred Rodian’s concentration. His corporal came jogging across the courtyard from the door to one of the gatehouse’s inner towers. Lúcan halted with a curt nod to Rodian.

  “Sir, one of the men on the wall is missing,”

  “Missing?”

  “Jonah reported when he came to the front on his last half circuit. He hadn’t seen Maolís anywhere along the rear wall.”

  Rodian’s stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a rock, and he turned on Hawes. “Corporal, escort the premin to her study and see that she remains safe there.”

  “Captain,” Hawes said, “I am perfectly safe on my—”

  “I insist,” Rodian interrupted. “Your council called me to protect this place against intruders. One of mine is missing, leaving a breach in security.”

  She breathed in quickly, as if about to argue further.

  “For your own protection, Premin,” Rodian continued, “as now required of me. Corporal?”

  Lúcan turned to Hawes and gestured toward the courtyard’s northwest side. Hawes hesitated a bit longer, as if uncertain what to say. But what could she say?

  She finally gave Rodian a slight nod and turned to walk off ahead of Lúcan. Dorian backstepped after the pair, still watching Rodian.

  “Return to your duty, Dorian,” Hawes ordered.

  As soon as all three entered the northwest storage building, Rodian turned at a jog for the gatehouse tunnel. Upon reaching the portcullis, he looked out and up through its beams.

  “Jonah, are you there?” he called out.

  “Yes, sir,” his guardsman answered from above in the tower’s gear room.

  “Rouse Angus and get down here—now!”

  Rodian turned back up the tunnel. If there was an intruder, he would no longer be spotted from the walls. He was already inside.

  “Hurry,” Brot’an whispered.

  Leesil bit his lower lip against a retort. He was doing his best, and with this lock, Brot’an wasn’t going to do any better. Through the picks, Leesil felt something inside the lock that wasn’t normal. He should’ve expected that it wouldn’t be easy getting through a keep of sages so paranoid about secrets that they’d locked up Wynn. But that didn’t account for the poor latch on the library’s upper window.

  He set upon the lock again, trying by feel to open it.

  “Hold the light closer,” he said.

  Brot’an did so, though the crystal was now dimmer than before.

  “Rub it,” Leesil said. “That should fix its light.”

  With a frown, Brot’an did so, and the crystal brightened a bit.

  Through his picks, Leesil felt something give. “Got it,” he breathed.

  Brot’an raised the eyebrow with the scars running through it, stepped back, and pocketed the crystal. Everything went dim but for light on the ceiling from some other faraway lamp in the library.

  Leesil tucked away his tools and rose. He gripped the handle and looked to Brot’an, who nodded. He opened the door, prepared to step out into some passage through the keep. Well, there was a passage, but it was too dark to see anything beyond half a dozen yards.

  This building built in the keep’s old inner bailey was flush against the keep wall. When he and Brot’an had surveyed it from outside the grounds, they knew somehow it had to have an entrance into the keep’s main building. They’d anticipated a locked or barred door in what they’d discovered was a library, but . . .

  “Give me the crystal,” Leesil said in a low voice, and held out his hand.

  Even before Brot’an dropped it into his palm, the crystal’s light exposed the problem.

  Leesil cursed softly under his breath.

  Of course there would be a passage connecting this building through the keep’s old, massive wall. He had simply hoped that the sages, likely living on stipends from their local monarchy, wouldn’t waste money on a second door.

  But there it was, another few yards down the dark, narrow passage.

  Leesil strode to the second door, gripped its handle halfheartedly, and gently twisted. Of course it was locked. With a sigh, he handed the crystal back to Brot’an and crouched to pull out his tools once more.

  Chane tried to listen at the door of the small room, hoping to hear whatever might be said outside. He was almost certain that the other voice out in the passage belonged to Captain Rodian. Then came the muted sound of the main doors opening, and perhaps a third voice outside before the door swung shut. It had all been too quick, too quiet, and nothing more reached him.

  He stood there in indecision.

  Hawes had told him to wait, but she had not returned. What had she been talking about with the
captain? Who was that third voice out in the courtyard—where Ore-Locks and Wynn would have to come through? Had Hawes herself somehow run afoul of Rodian’s guards?

  Chane had heard two sets of footsteps earlier, but they could have belonged to anyone. He had lost track of time amid all these mistakes and mishaps. Those steps could have even been Rodian and one of his guards searching the keep.

  With the captain moving freely about, in and out of the courtyard, it seemed unlikely that Wynn and Ore-Locks had reached the main building. Perhaps they were still stuck in her room. If so, Wynn would be watching out her window, waiting for the courtyard to clear.

  Chane needed a way to check and see, without having to step into the courtyard—or drop a glove outside the main doors. He could wait no longer for Hawes and cracked open the door, wincing as it creaked.

  Inching it open, slowly broadening his view, he found the whole main passage empty for as far as he could see. He crept out, heading northward toward the kitchens.

  There was one route to where Chane might view Wynn’s window across the courtyard: in the top of the storage building, well above Hawes’s study in the underground floors.

  “Can you feel any vibrations?” Wynn whispered, huddling with Ore-Locks behind the door of the dark room.

  “Nothing,” he answered.

  A tentative hope rose in Wynn. She pulled her cold-lamp crystal from her pocket and rubbed it. Soft light illuminated Ore-Locks’s clean-shaven, broad face. His brow was furrowed in frustration.

  “I’ll have a look,” she said.

  “Do not—let me,” he said, and turned to the wall beside the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Having a look.”

  Ore-Locks pressed his face against—into—the stone wall. The stone’s dark, mottled gray texture began to flow over him, as if he were becoming the stone itself.

  Wynn grabbed the back of his cloak and heaved before his ears sank out of sight. Ore-Locks straightened up as his head came out of the wall.

  “What is it now!” he whispered sharply.

  “What if someone sees you like that?”

  He leaned into her face. “Do you think you and your little crystal would attract less attention?”

  “I was going to cover it,” she argued.

  “You will still have to lean out in plain sight to look far enough up the passage.”

  “At least I wouldn’t look like a gargoyle’s head sprouting from the wall!”

  “You are a lot of—”

  “Don’t . . . you say it,” and Wynn leaned in to him this time. “I’m sick of people telling me I’m so much trouble.”

  Ore-Locks’s mouth tightly closed in a flat line. One of his eyebrows rose higher than the other.

  “Oh, fine!” she said, and he turned away, putting his head into the wall.

  Even after the times Wynn had seen this before, it was still disturbing to see stone practically flow through and over him, as if it were turning him into a statue. It stopped halfway down his great bulk once he’d finished leaning out through the thick wall. Only from his waist down did he still stick out in the room, but he was taking too long.

  Ore-Locks suddenly lurched back into Wynn. She grabbed his cloak again to keep herself from being knocked over. His jaw was clenched, and in the silence of the little room, Wynn heard the creak of another door out in the passage.

  “This is ridiculous,” she whispered.

  For the first time since Ore-Locks’s appearance, he looked truly infuriated. “Everything around you turns ridiculous!”

  Wynn bit back a retort. After all, he wasn’t wrong.

  Leesil managed the second lock quickly, now that he knew what to feel for. A click answered his manipulations. He tested the handle carefully, nudged the door just a little to see that it would open, looked up at Brot’an, and nodded. Then he hurried to gather his tools. As he stood up, Brot’an pocketed the crystal.

  Leesil inched the door open, but upon looking out, he found himself staring up a long, empty passage. By its make and stonework, it should be part of the keep’s main building. He’d hoped to keep any encounters to a minimum, but even at this time of night he hadn’t expected to run into no one.

  Had the city-guard captain called a curfew? Well, if so, then so much the better.

  He shrugged at Brot’an, and they both stepped through the door.

  Leesil led the way, and when they neared an intersection at the passage’s end, he flattened against the right wall as he slid forward. He watched to the left of the main passage, until he reached the corner, and then carefully turned to face into the wall. Tilting his head, he used only his left eye to peer to the right up the long, broad passage.

  By the length of the last passage they’d entered, he guessed that this main corridor ran parallel to this building’s inner wall. The courtyard had to be beyond it, just outside.

  A light halfway down spilled illumination into the long, broad passage, but he couldn’t see a lantern or lamp. There was some type of recess there on the left. Beyond it, the passage continued northward, too dark to clearly see its end. For as few lights as were here, perhaps that recess held a door out into the courtyard.

  Leesil backed around the corner and whispered, “There’s a possible way out just up ahead.”

  Brot’an nodded, urging him on, and Leesil rounded the corner.

  Rodian reached the courtyard again as Angus and Jonah came out of the gatehouse’s inner northward tower. He waved them toward the keep’s main doors and then followed, sweeping the entire courtyard with his eyes.

  Jonah reached the doors first, and both men paused and waited.

  “I want a full search of the interior,” Rodian ordered. “Every room, as fast as we can move without missing anything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jonah pulled the doors open and Angus stepped inside. Rodian was about to follow his men when a muffled shout stalled him.

  “Sir!”

  Turning, he spotted Lúcan half stumbling out a door in the northwest building . . . and he was alone.

  “Go!” Rodian ordered Angus and Jonah, and then trotted to meet his corporal.

  Chane had just darted past the entryway to get away from its light, and he began to make his way up the main passage’s northward half with care. He was still uncertain if Rodian and Hawes were the only ones who had come into the main building.

  If he could reach the kitchen and cut through its rear access, he would end up on the lower floor of the old granary and stables now used for storage and workshops. Once he’d reached its top floor, he might get a look across the courtyard to Wynn’s window. But he’d gone only few paces past the entryway when he heard a sound so quiet—almost nonexistent—that a living being might have missed it.

  Flattening against the passage’s outer wall, he looked behind himself, southward along the main passage. Light spilling from the entryway made it hard to be certain, but beyond that glimmer he thought he saw the darkness move.

  For one instant Chane thought of turning and running, and then it struck him that he would have more clearly heard a guard on patrol. In the dark beyond the entryway, Chane thought he saw a figure approaching, perhaps slightly crouched in stealth.

  Something—someone—had covertly entered the keep.

  Chane drew his sword but kept it out of sight at his side so it would not reflect any light. Whether an invader was after Wynn or something or someone else, he was not letting it remain here. Then he saw something more—another, much taller shape in the dark—coming up the passage as the first one drew near the entryway’s light.

  The first one was half bent over, creeping. Of medium height, the figure’s face and hair were hidden by a long wrap of dark cloth. Chane glimpsed the same on the taller one; it was now clear that both were male.

  Neither were guards or sages.

  The first one froze, almost straightening, and stared up the passage, as if he saw Chane hiding beyond the entryway. Chane s
aw slanted, amber eyes; he was facing a pair of elves. What were any of the Lhoin’na doing here, sneaking in like thieves in the night?

  Chane was not about to ask even as he stepped out from the wall, raising his sword.

  All of the waiting and hiding and waiting was wearing on Wynn and turning her stomach into a knot. Wherever Chane was, he too had to be panicking by now. His simple plan had gone completely awry.

  “We have to go!” she whispered. “If you don’t try the door again, I will.”

  Ore-Locks grimaced, looking uncertainly at the door.

  “If we’re caught in here together, it will look even worse for you,” she added.

  With his mouth tight, Ore-Locks reached for the door, but his hand stopped halfway.

  “Oh, what now?” Wynn whispered in frustration.

  He pointed down at the floor, and for at least the fourth time tonight, Wynn wanted to groan. He must have felt something in the floor stones, yet another someone walking past outside in the passage.

  Ore-Locks stood still, watching the door, even as he asked, “By the ancestors, how many of your people go wandering about in the dark? It is like one of my people’s tram stations out there, at the end of the workday!”

  Wynn had no answer. Once again, he wasn’t wrong.

  Leesil stopped before the entryway, seeing the cold lamp mounted above the broad and stout double doors in the recess halfway up the broad corridor. He was uncomfortably aware of being too exposed.

  Something beyond the entryway in the passage’s other half caught his eye, something too light-colored to hide for long in the dark.

  He fixed on a form flattened against the passage’s outer wall, and then he straightened just a little. He swung his left hand down, reaching for a winged blade strapped to his thigh. The form beyond the doors’ recess stepped away from the wall . . . with a longsword in its hand.

  Leesil heard the soft sound behind him of something sliding out of cloth. He knew Brot’an had drawn his blades. All Leesil’s plans drained away, like alley sludge into a city sewer under a downpour.

  Killing had never been part of his plan. Whoever this other man was, he was neither a guard nor a sage and had no like compunction against bloodshed. And any noise would quickly draw attention from elsewhere.