Between Their Worlds_A Novel of the Noble Dead

by Barb Hendee

Wynn grabbed the collar of Magiere’s hauberk and jerked hard, forcing Magiere to look down at her.

  “Not this way,” she warned, and looked to Leesil, shaking her head again. “Not now, but soon. Go.”

  Wynn clearly wanted to avoid any confrontation here, as did Leesil and likely Chap. Leesil pulled Magiere away, though she wouldn’t take her eyes off Wynn. All this time, Shade just sat at the door Wynn was dragged toward, as if waiting and knowing how it all had to end.

  Wynn, Shade, and the escort sage vanished from sight. As the door thumped shut, Magiere jerked free of Leesil’s grip, turning toward the other sages in the courtyard. The one beyond Chap had lowered her hand, though Leesil couldn’t figure what that had been about.

  Before Magiere took another step, Chap wheeled on her and huffed twice for “No.”

  “Wynn wants it this way,” Leesil whispered in Belaskian.

  Something in his voice or his words must have gotten through to Magiere. She stood rigid, eyeing all who had cut them off from Wynn.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she nearly spat. “Get her back out here.”

  The remaining four sages, especially the one with hair like a gray porcupine, just stood there looking back, but mostly eyeing Leesil and ignoring Magiere. The woman with the long gray braid struck Leesil as . . . imperious. He didn’t like her.

  “This is an internal affair and no concern of yours,” she said coldly. “Leave or I will summon the Shyldfälches to remove all of you. You can ponder and learn our customs and laws from inside a garrison cell.”

  None of this was playing out at all as Leesil had expected. He, Magiere, and Chap had only arrived in the city tonight. They’d come straight here, anxious to find Wynn and the hospitality of the guild. Through Wynn, Leesil had known the ways of the sages for several years, or thought he did. The few things he hadn’t worried about upon arriving were an open welcome, warm food, and a decent bed.

  This was nothing like what he knew of sages. What was going on?

  Chap huffed once and started toward the gatehouse tunnel. Confused and uncertain, Leesil made the choice to follow his companion since his youth. He snatched up the travel chest and hoped that Wynn had somehow told Chap something to make sense out of all of this.

  “We have to go now,” he whispered to Magiere. “We can’t help her if we’re locked up.”

  Magiere’s head swung toward him, and thankfully her irises hadn’t flooded black. At least she still controlled her inner nature.

  Then she turned her ire on the stiffly standing sages again. “We will be back.”

  Leesil almost groaned. Threats weren’t going to help. He pulled Magiere along after Chap, though she resisted before giving in. He didn’t know whether to feel relief or anger at himself. He didn’t want to abandon Wynn any more than the others, but something had passed between Wynn and Chap.

  After all they’d been through since leaving Wynn behind nearly a year ago, Leesil trusted Chap’s instincts—and reasoning—far more than Magiere’s. Once they passed out of the gatehouse tunnel and approached the bailey gate, which emptied out into the city, he heard the clank of gears and a rumbling.

  “What are they doing now?” Magiere asked angrily.

  Of course, he’d heard that sound many times in his youth, when he was enslaved with his parents as a spy and assassin to a warlord in his homeland.

  Leesil turned around and watched the tunnel’s outer portcullis rumble downward. The wedged ends of its vertical beams slammed into the stone pockets of the tunnel opening’s floor.

  Magiere again turned her eyes on him, her mouth tightened in bitten-back fury.

  Leesil hoped more than ever that Chap had some answers from Wynn.

  Still looking down from the window of Wynn’s room, Chane went cold when the dark-haired metaologer grabbed her arm. He shifted back a half step before stopping himself from making a blind rush for the door.

  He would never willingly hurt a sage, but Wynn came before all others. Even so, he forced himself to remain, still not believing she could be in physical danger from her peers.

  Returning to the window, Chane watched the metaologer dragging her toward the barracks door. He had only an instant to see Magiere, Leesil, and Chap being expelled, but he could not care less. All that mattered was what happened to Wynn, and it appeared that the dark-haired metaologer was bringing her up to her room.

  That washed everything else from Chane’s thoughts. No one in the guild knew he had returned, but if the Premin Council had turned its eyes on Wynn again, what would they think of finding him in her room?

  Looking down again, he did not see Wynn or her escort—meaning they were already inside this barracks, which functioned as a dormitory. They would arrive at the door to this room any instant.

  Rushing to the room’s inner side, Chane flattened against the wall behind the door. Almost immediately the door abruptly swung inward. Wynn stumbled in with Shade at her heels, and, to Chane’s relief, no one else entered. Wynn got her footing and whirled around to glare at whoever had shoved her inside, and then her eyes began to widen at the sight of him in hiding.

  Chane put a finger to his lips.

  Wynn quickly averted her gaze and looked out the doorway into the passage.

  Magiere stood helpless outside the gatehouse, staring at the closed portcullis. Being helpless and hobbled made her angry. Confusion amplified that, and the frustrating mix left her edging again toward rage.

  “Come on,” Leesil said, backing toward the bailey gate. “We need to talk to Chap and find out what’s going on.”

  Magiere turned on him as the only outlet for her anger. “What’s there to figure out? We just let Wynn get dragged off . . . and we left her . . . again.”

  Leesil flinched, but the sight gave her no satisfaction. It seemed she couldn’t seem to stop hurting him, even now.

  “Those are her own people,” he responded, his voice even and cold. “She didn’t want an open fight . . . and neither should you.”

  Leesil’s being right didn’t make Magiere feel any better, any calmer.

  Chap barked from the bailey gate, urging them to hurry.

  Magiere fell into step beside Leesil, but she was far from giving up on Wynn tonight—no matter what he thought. She hadn’t known what she would find when they’d come seeking Wynn’s home, but if those sages in the courtyard were indeed Wynn’s people, they had absolutely no regard for her.

  This fortified stone castle didn’t match Magiere’s imagining of a sages’ guild. Back in Bela, the sages lived in a decommissioned barracks given to them by the city’s council. That place had been filled with warmth and kindness, cups of mint tea, faded tables, and stacks of old parchments. This place was more like the buildings of the feudal nobles and tyrants of her own homeland, or those of Leesil’s youth in the Warlands. The small guild annex back in Bela had nothing in common with this Calm Seatt branch.

  Wynn didn’t belong in there.

  Chap’s barking grew insistent, and Magiere walked faster, growing as annoyed with him as she was with Leesil. Why were they both in such a hurry to abandon Wynn? As Leesil leaned forward to open the gate, Magiere’s anger escaped again.

  “We can’t just leave Wynn in there!”

  Chap snarled at her, barked twice for “no,” and then raked the gate with his claws. What did he want now?

  Leesil opened the gate as he answered. “We’re not going to leave her. But we’re also not going to blindly assault this place, let alone the sages. Not until we learn what Chap knows.”

  As soon as Chap had enough room to slip out the gate, he darted northwest, running along the outside of the bailey wall. Leesil quickly followed, and Magiere had no choice but to jog after them.

  In the shadows of the wall’s curve below the west tower, Chap slowed to a halt and turned about. Leesil dropped beside him, put down the chest, and then took off his pack to dig inside it. He pulled out a long, rolled piece of treated leather as Magiere joined th
em.

  Talking with Chap had been a challenge since they’d left Wynn and gone off on their own. In their earlier days together, after they’d first discovered that Chap was much more than a dog, Wynn had used a “talking hide” inked with Elvish letters and a few words to help him speak. He both read and understood that language. Wynn would ask him questions, and he’d paw or nose the letters or words to answer.

  Later, through Wynn’s fumbling with magic, she became able to hear Chap’s “sent” thoughts like a voice inside her head. That had certainly made talking easier on him, but without Wynn, he’d lost his voice. It proved a greater problem than any of them expected, since neither Leesil nor Magiere understood Elvish. Fortunately, in all his sneaky years with Leesil, Chap had picked up Belaskian, as well. Leesil had created his own version of a talking hide in that language.

  When they’d first journeyed across the world from the Farlands, Wynn had tutored all of them in Numanese. Magiere was quicker than Leesil when it came to spoken tongues, but he was far better than her when it came to written words.

  There was barely enough moonlight to see, and the instant Leesil had the talking hide out, Chap pawed it open on the cobblestones. He went at it with both his nose and one paw flying across letters until Leesil grabbed him by the scruff.

  “Not so fast! What was that about books?”

  “What’s he saying?” Magiere cut in.

  Leesil ignored her. “Chap, start over. What are you talking about?”

  Chap began again, slower this time. Magiere was still left behind in trying to follow the indicated letters, but when Chap finally paused, Leesil looked up, shaking his head.

  “I don’t think Wynn could tell Chap much,” he explained. “Something about the catacombs . . . and all those books, and then some special scroll or parchment. Obviously she didn’t want to leave the keep . . . castle—whatever that place is. Chap thinks she’s afraid of . . . losing access to the archives.”

  Magiere hadn’t known what to expect from Chap, but she’d expected a better reason than this.

  “That’s all he knows?” she demanded. “And he made us leave her in there?”

  Chap’s paw started moving again, and this time, Magiere recognized one word that he spelled out.

  “Prisoner?” she said aloud, and she immediately stood up.

  Chap’s furry canine face appeared just as frustrated as Magiere felt. He huffed three times for “maybe” or “uncertain,” and then locked his crystal blue eyes onto hers. As well as dipping into the surfacing memories of anyone in his sightline, Chap could make any memory he’d seen before rise in the owner’s mind. This was sometimes a faster, or simpler, way to communicate.

  Without warning, a rush of memories flooded Magiere’s thoughts.

  First came a clear image of Wynn being captured by Lord Darmouth’s men during their time crossing the Warlands. Those soldiers had dragged her away to lock her up. At that time, there had been nothing Magiere could do to stop it. Even the memory brought up a wave of impotent rage. That same anger had rushed upon Magiere when the dark-haired sage had grabbed Wynn.

  The memory passed in a flash, and the next was of Leesil wrapping up the orb they’d found in the Pock Peaks to be carried away from the six-towered castle. Then followed a memory of Wynn trying to carry away too many books from the decaying library they’d uncovered in that same place.

  Magiere didn’t like it, but some of what Chap tried to convey seeped through. Wynn being locked up . . . an orb being found and recovered . . . Wynn’s passion for the ancient texts she and Chap had selected for taking. All of these were somehow linked.

  Leesil looked up at her from his crouched position before the talking hide.

  “Wynn’s mixed up in something serious, if her own people are doing this to her. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten herself in trouble, thinking she knows what’s right versus any rule or law. Our showing up in the archives must have been the final pebble to make it all cave in on her. But she still insisted that we leave her behind.”

  He glanced down the road, his eyes narrowing, and Magiere followed his focus to the keep’s smaller gatehouse towers peeking above the high bailey wall.

  “Maybe she didn’t think they would lock her up,” Leesil added. “Not if she wanted to stay to keep her access to the archives.”

  He looked to Chap, but Chap just huffed three times. He wasn’t sure, either.

  Magiere glanced away, for she’d had enough of this. “Then we get her out—tonight.”

  Leesil rose and anger leaked into his voice. “What do you suggest? Yell a few insults through the portcullis and hope someone opens it up? Even if they did, and they wouldn’t, we can’t just blunder back in there. We’ll make things worse for her. We need a real plan . . . not just blind, bully tactics. We need to know what’s going on . . . first.”

  Magiere’s ire at Leesil and even Chap suddenly shifted to Wynn. What had that girl been thinking, sending off the only ones who could help her? Now they were separated, and it was up to Magiere—again—to pull Wynn’s fat out of the fire.

  But how in a fortress held by sages?

  “First, we get the lay of this place,” she insisted, “if we’re going to break back in.”

  Ignoring Leesil’s retort and Chap’s warning, Magiere stalked off down the road along the bailey wall. Even from ten paces, she heard Leesil cursing under his breath and Chap rumbling.

  Leesil snatched up the talking hide, rolled it tightly, and went after Magiere. He wasn’t surprised when she walked right past the bailey gate, heading along the wall toward its turn around the southern tower.

  She moved with a determined grace, her long, black hair barely showing its bloodred tints in moonlight as its bound tail swung across her upper back. All along the way, she peered up at the keep’s heights and studied the high wall itself.

  Leesil knew this wasn’t over, not by far. Magiere was just getting started, and he was so tired on the inside. His love for her—his desire for her—was as certain as ever. But during their years together, she had always been skeptical, reluctant, leaving him the freedom to be the impetuous, sly one. That had changed as her obsession grew, and now he had to be ever more sly with her. He didn’t like it.

  “When did I become the cautious one?” he whispered to himself.

  And in one more step, a memory surged upon him and slowed him almost to a halt.

  Leesil saw a white, icy waste where nearly nothing stood for as far as he could see through freezing mist and windblown falling snow. But he saw something. No more than a hazy silhouette, a broken gray-white mountain range rose far ahead in the white distance.

  “Don’t!” he hissed, cringing as he spun on Chap at his side. “Not now . . . not here!”

  Chap exhaled through his nose, gazing after Magiere.

  Most people couldn’t read an animal’s face, though some might claim so. Most hadn’t grown up and roamed the world with a four-footed manipulative Fay in the form of a too-tall, too-lanky silver-gray wolf.

  Leesil saw his own old worry in Chap’s crystal blue eyes as the dog watched Magiere, but he couldn’t deal with that right now.

  “What happened up there has to wait,” he added to Chap, forcing calm for the sake of his new role as the sensible one. “Until we make sure she doesn’t lose herself again.”

  Chap let out a sigh so human that it was unsettling. After a long pause, he huffed once in agreement. Leesil jogged a few steps back to retrieve the rest of his gear on the ground, and then he started off after Magiere again.

  Whatever she might think of him tonight, she was wrong to claim he’d abandon Wynn. First, though, they had to get in touch with their small friend and learn what was happening in this place.

  Not by Magiere’s ways and means, but by Leesil’s, if he could think of something.

  CHAPTER 3

  WYNN AVERTED HER GAZE when she spotted Chane, so as not to alert her escort to his presence. Once Shade trotted into the
room and hopped up on the bed, Wynn reached for the door. Before she touched the handle, Dorian jerked the door shut without a word.

  They barely knew each other—hadn’t seen each other in years—but unfamiliarity wasn’t enough to explain his manner. Wynn wondered again why journeyor metaologers, who should’ve been preparing for new assignments, appeared to be lingering about at the beck and call of Hawes and Sykion.

  Chane stepped out to her, but the instant his lips parted to speak, she reached up and clamped a hand over his mouth. At his scowl, she cocked her head toward the door. His scowl faded as his gaze narrowed, and they both listened in silence.

  Wynn heard no footfalls fading down the outer passage. Her escort must still be outside, standing guard. When she looked back, Chane nodded, for they both knew he couldn’t be discovered in her room, not now. Then she hesitated for a few breaths, giving herself less than a moment to feel relief that he’d returned safely from helping to hide the orb in Dhredze Seatt. He was so tall, she had to tilt her head back to see his pale, handsome face and jaggedly cut, red-brown hair. Dressed in his usual boots, breeches, white shirt, and cloak, just the familiar sight of him moved her.

  That moment was all she allowed. This was no time for a reunion.

  Wynn quickly retreated to her desk, flipped open a blank journal, and snatched up a paper-wrapped charcoal stick to begin writing in Belaskian.

  The orb?

  After all that had happened, it was still the first thing on her mind. Chane took the charcoal stick and wrote one word before handing it back.

  Safe.

  Now began the harder part, as Wynn wrote furiously. Soon she would be hauled before the council for questioning. Chane had to get out of her room—out of the keep—before they came for her. Only two nights had passed since she, he, and Shade had returned from their long journey south. She’d come straight to the guild, but he’d gone on for the quick trip to Dhredze Seatt and back. It would be better that the premin council didn’t know he’d returned, as well.

  There was something of greater concern, but Wynn had barely finished writing that Chane should leave when he took the charcoal from her hand. He again wrote one word, but he wouldn’t give the charcoal back this time.