Between Their Worlds_A Novel of the Noble Dead

by Barb Hendee

  Chane stood flanked by two metaologers as Premin Hawes stepped wide around him.

  She gestured once at her subordinates with a flip of her hand. Both halted their creeping, watchful approach and sidestepped toward each other. All three stood directly in front of Chane, but this made him more wary, not less, than when they had tried to flank him. It was more disturbing than when Hawes had dismissed those two naturologists, leaving him alone with only metaologers. And Hawes now stood in his way.

  “Premin,” he rasped carefully. “I have no wish to speak with the council. I am only a guest here, and as I told you, I am off to seek lodgings elsewhere.”

  Her hazel eyes did not blink. “If the council wishes to speak with you, it would be best for you to come with us.”

  Chane caught the underlying threat in her words. She had dealt with him once before and with little effort on her part. That she stood just barely beyond a weapon’s reach, so poised and calm, truly unnerved him.

  He gauged the distance of the sage off to her left. If this came down to violence, he would have to put all three of them down very fast. Of the three, he would have to disable Hawes first. The other two might be dangerous enough, but not like her. And his own skills in conjury, mostly by ritual, were paltry and slow compared to what he had seen of her thaumaturgy by spellcraft.

  A movement off to the left caught Chane’s eye.

  Shade trotted out of the keep’s main doors and stopped at the sight of him. The guardian sage behind her did the same. That was all Chane needed—another unknown metaologer. Shade’s head shifted suddenly, and she stared in turn at the two sages flanking Hawes. Her jowls pulled back once in a quick, silent snarl.

  Chane did not know what worried him more: that Shade might assault a sage or that she had a reason to do so beyond what he could speculate. Had she seen something surface from the sages’ memories? He must be in greater danger than he realized.

  Shade’s hackles began to rise as she turned her full attention on Premin Hawes, but the other sage behind the dog crept closer and raised a hand in the air.

  “Premin!” that one called out in warning.

  Chane’s hand dropped to his sword hilt.

  “Open up!” someone else shouted.

  The sharp command echoed out of the gatehouse tunnel and was followed by the clanking of the chains and gears for the outer portcullis. Both Chane and Hawes quickly glanced down the tunnel.

  This was Chane’s only chance. He tried to think of a way to signal Shade, to tell her what he would do, and hopefully she would do nothing to make things worse.

  Without warning, Shade shot forward, leaving her escort behind as she rushed the sage on Hawes’s right.

  Chane bolted for the gatehouse tunnel, pulling his dwarven longsword. He focused all his effort on speed as he breached the tunnel’s mouth, his eyes on the rising portcullis.

  “Captain!” Hawes shouted from behind him. “Watch out!”

  In the instant it took for those words to sink in, Chane saw something between the portcullis’s upright beams. He caught a glimpse of men in red tabards on horseback, and the lead horse was pure white.

  There were mounted Shyldfälches, city guards, on the other side of the rising portcullis.

  Wynn gasped, her feet seemingly stuck, as Shade charged a metaologer and Dorian lunged after the dog. Premin Hawes turned toward the disturbance, and then Chane broke away, racing into the gatehouse tunnel. Wynn heard the premin’s sharp shout of warning.

  Captain Rodian had come, and Wynn came to her senses. She ran out her door, down the passage to its end stairs, pushing herself to reach the courtyard before anyone went after Chane.

  Chane was almost to the portcullis when he spotted the boots of three guards hitting the ground as they slid off their horses. There was no choice but to fight, and there were too many in his way to be careful about it.

  Shade suddenly bolted past him, barking and snarling.

  Chane almost stalled as she charged under the rising portcullis, snapping savagely at the white horse’s legs as she passed. There was no time for him to consider how she had gotten away from those sages or why she had not stayed behind for Wynn.

  He ducked his head, lunged under the rising portcullis beams, and found himself face-to-face with the white horse. It was stomping and sidestepping after Shade’s passing, and atop the mare sat Captain Rodian.

  “You!” Rodian shouted at the sight of Chane.

  Shade’s snarls and the shouting of the other guards seemed to come from all around. Behind Rodian was a bald city guard, still mounted. All that Chane could think of was to put the captain off before the others overwhelmed Shade.

  Chane lashed out and punched the captain’s horse in the face.

  Wynn flew out the barracks door into the courtyard, and the eyes of all four metaologers turned to her. She made a dash for the gatehouse tunnel, but barely halfway there, something jerked hard on the back of her downed cowl. The cowl’s base cinched against her throat, choking her as she flailed to a stop.

  Even as she gagged, struggling to pull free, the grip on her cowl was released as someone tried to grab her more solidly from behind. Light-headed and panicked, Wynn reacted without thinking.

  She stomped back, trying to hit her assailant’s foot, and missed. Her sudden rearward shift backed her up against someone tall. She twisted hard as the grip latched onto her cowl again.

  Wynn wildly lashed back and upward with her little fist. It collided with someone’s face, and her hand went numb in a shock of pain.

  “Enough!”

  At Premin Hawes’s command, the air blew upward around Wynn like a storm.

  A harsh crack sounded as the horse whipped its head aside from Chane’s fist. The animal reared, and all the captain could do was clench his reins.

  Chane ducked around the horse and saw Shade throw herself at one dismounted guard with a young face and steel gray hair. When the man raised his sword, Chane veered toward him, but Shade instantly changed course.

  She clipped the guard’s knee with her shoulder. The man staggered, about to topple, as she bolted for the open bailey gate. Without bothering to make sure the man went down, Chane followed.

  Another guard charged into his path. Before the man’s blade cleared its sheath, Chane brought his sword down, aiming with the flat of his blade.

  It struck the man’s head and glanced off to hammer into the hollow of his collarbone. The guard tilted under the force and dropped to his knees.

  “Angus!” another guard shouted in alarm, running to help.

  Chane barreled into him. Something sharp sliced across his upper arm as he threw the man off. Hunger rose to eat the pain, and Chane ran out the bailey gate. But he was at a loss when he spotted Shade.

  The dog was halfway up the road to the north at a full run. All Chane could do was chase after Shade along the bailey wall.

  * * *

  Wynn’s robe thrashed about her, pulled and whipped by an impossible, sudden wind. That and her wild swing knocked her off balance. She went tumbling onto the courtyard’s cobblestones. Immediately scrambling to all fours, she looked for Chane in the gatehouse tunnel but then stopped, frozen by another sight.

  Beyond Dorian, who crouched holding his nose, Premin Hawes was coming closer.

  The open fury on the premin’s face would’ve been daunting enough. But though her midnight blue robe thrashed, the whirling wind didn’t topple her. Wynn heard the barracks’ windowpanes rattling in the storm.

  Hawes stepped purposefully forward, as if she were the eye of a small hurricane. Even the other two metaologers in the courtyard backed toward the keep’s main doors, their wide eyes locked upon the premin as they tried to shield their faces from the wind.

  Wynn did so, as well, too afraid to even scoot away as Hawes neared. She had never seen any strong emotion displayed by the premin of metaology. Those fierce hazel eyes, and even her short, bristling hair waving in the storm, were enough to freeze Wynn in place.<
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  Hawes slowed to a halt, not quite between Wynn and Dorian. The wind died so suddenly, it made Wynn shudder.

  “We do not act like common thugs,” the premin said quietly, though a shout would have been less frightening. “We do not turn against our own . . . like this.” Then her voice cracked like thunder, “Get up, both of you!”

  Dorian obeyed instantly, as did Wynn, but she peered down the tunnel.

  There was no sign of Chane or Shade. Instead, there was a somewhat chaotic group of five Shyldfälches, several trying to pick themselves up. Captain Rodian was on his feet, attempting to calm his horse as he shouted orders.

  “Lúcan! Branwell! I want him alive!”

  Wynn had never seen Rodian so openly angry. He normally kept his emotions in check, almost as well as Hawes. Wynn knew she was in deep now.

  Premin Hawes grasped Wynn’s arm and strode toward the tunnel’s mouth. To Wynn’s frustration, the premin’s grip was like an iron shackle.

  “Captain!” Hawes shouted. “Call off your guards. That man is not your concern here.”

  Rodian turned from Snowbird and stared up the tunnel.

  Chane nearly flew down Old Bailey Road toward the west tower, not slowing until he rounded the bailey wall’s curve below the tower and cleared another block deeper into the city. He had not chosen this path, following as Shade led the way. At the block’s far end, beyond the buildings outside the remnants of the keep’s old outer bailey wall, Shade wheeled to a stop.

  Chane caught up and looked back for pursuers. He stared down the empty street, waiting for city guards to round the corner of Old Bailey Road. But they never came. Glancing down, he saw Shade peering the same way, and he slipped his sword into its sheath.

  What was she doing here, and why had she run out of the gate? With Shade outside the guild, Wynn was completely alone.

  “Go back,” he ordered. “Find a way inside and stay with Wynn.”

  She huffed twice for “no.”

  “Shade!”

  She turned on him with a growl and drew back her jowls in warning. To date, Shade had been fiercely protective of Wynn. She barely tolerated him except for the few occasions they had been forced to work for the same purpose.

  “We cannot leave her alone in there,” he said more calmly.

  Shade ceased snarling and just looked at him with her crystalline blue eyes. She finally huffed once for “yes.”

  Chane did not understand. Was that “Yes, we have to leave Wynn alone”?

  In frustration, he fingered the brass ring on his left hand. That small bit of metal, which he called his ring of nothing, protected him from anyone or anything detecting his presence or anything about him except by normal senses. This included masking his nature as an undead. Unfortunately, it also dulled his senses, and hid any memory from a majay-hì like Shade. He could not even call up memories to help him communicate with her while he wore it.

  Even when he took it off, their communication was limited to Shade, in turn, calling up only memories she had seen within him. And because of the ring, Shade had glimpsed very few of those. It was not the same as Wynn’s singular ability to communicate with Shade through memory-speak. The dog could share her own memories, or even the memories of others that she had glimpsed, with Wynn.

  More unfortunate, with the ring off, Shade fully sensed Chane for what he was. The majay-hì were natural enemies of the undead, and somewhere in this city was another like Shade.

  Along with Magiere and Leesil, Chane had to worry about Chap. He was reluctant to expose himself even for a short while. By Wynn’s accounts, Chap was more potent and aware than any other majay-hì in existence. But he saw no other option.

  Chane held up his hand so Shade could see what he was about to do. He always warned her before removing the ring of nothing. Her lips curled up in distaste, but she stood waiting as he slipped it off.

  The world shimmered in Chane’s eyes and his senses sharpened in the night. He could hear an insect crawling up the shop wall nearest to him. He could smell the life pulsing within the city, and it was a relief, like being unchained.

  The beast stirred inside him, roused by the scents of life in Chane’s nose.

  Shade snarled softly as she looked him in the eyes, and he suddenly saw a flash of memory.

  He was standing on the docks the night they had returned from their southern journey back to Calm Seatt. Before he had gone off to escort Ore-Locks in taking the orb into hiding, he had handed Wynn the scroll.

  Chane heard his own voice from that night as he clearly told Wynn, “For safekeeping.”

  The memory faded.

  He found himself further back in time, when he had crouched with Wynn in front of a city stable. She unrolled the scroll and looked at its blacked-out inner surface for the first time. This moment was from when he had first arrived in the city from halfway across the world in his search for her.

  Chane had seen enough, and slipped his ring back on as he looked down at Shade in the dark. She was not protecting him, and she had not abandoned Wynn so easily. Sometimes, Shade understood Wynn far better than Chane gave her credit for.

  Shade was protecting the scroll.

  “All right,” Chane said, knowing he would never change her mind. “Come.”

  Once again, he was acutely reminded that Shade was more than just an exceptionally intelligent beast. She had her own agenda, at least where Wynn was concerned. So long as they shared that, a truce between one majay-hì and an undead would continue.

  CHAPTER 5

  RODIAN STRUGGLED TO calm Snowbird as he absorbed all that had happened. His immediate focus was on regrouping his men, getting them into action, and seeing who had been injured, including his horse. Then Premin Hawes had shouted to let the man go . . . the man who’d just assaulted his men.

  Hawes stood beyond the gatehouse tunnel’s far end, holding Wynn Hygeorht by the forearm.

  If he hadn’t been called to arrest the escaping man, then why was he here? Why had Wynn’s wolf attacked and then run off with the man who’d struck his horse? Rodian had seen that man with Wynn in the past, but he’d never ascertained the nature of their relationship. And Wynn had never offered much in that regard.

  “Sir?” Branwell asked gruffly.

  The lieutenant obviously wanted to give chase. Rodian had half a mind to let him. He again wondered what he’d just walked into.

  For better or worse, Wynn Hygeorht appeared to be right in the middle of it all once again.

  “Hold,” Rodian ordered, handing off Snowbird’s reins to Branwell. “Lúcan, go see to Angus. Make sure he’s all right.”

  Rodian was angry and didn’t bother to hide it as he strode into the gatehouse tunnel. Hawes was almost unknown to him, as he’d never directly dealt with her before. But as he neared the inner courtyard, his attention shifted to Wynn. Her oval face had come to his mind often over the winter, though he hadn’t seen her since last autumn. Given events back then, he was at a loss for what to say to her.

  The question became moot when Hawes frowned at his approach, half turned, and called out, “Dorian.”

  A dark-haired sage in a midnight blue robe appeared from beyond the left of the tunnel’s inner end. He was wiping away blood dripping from his nose. Hawes whispered something to the young man and handed Wynn over to him.

  “Premin, no!” Wynn cried, trying to pull from the male sage’s grasp.

  The dark-robed young sage, a metaologer like Hawes, began dragging Wynn toward the keep’s main building. She struggled and shouted at him to let go, but to no avail.

  As Rodian entered the courtyard, he had an urge to rush in and pull the bloody-nosed sage off Wynn. Then he spotted two more sages, both in dark blue robes, and the pair fell in behind Wynn. All four passed through the keep’s doors and out of sight.

  Rodian was alone in the courtyard with Hawes, and he turned on her.

  “What is happening here?” he barked. “Where is she being taken?”

 
; Premin Hawes was as composed and still as the keep’s cold stone. “Captain, you of all people are aware that Journeyor Hygeorht is given to excesses. This is for her own safety.”

  “Safety from what? Don’t tell me it was that man fighting his way out of here. I saw them together the night they helped put down the black mage. Remember . . . the one who’d been killing your people over old books no one was allowed to see?”

  “There was trouble with other interlopers earlier this evening,” she answered. “That is why the high premin called for you. We require your assistance with security.”

  Rodian would’ve preferred dealing with High-Tower. The dwarf was easier to prod into a slip of temper. Even Sykion could be shaken. But this premin was calm and unmoved. Her tone told him nothing beneath her words.

  “Interlopers?” he repeated. “Not the one who just left with Wynn’s wolf?”

  “He is of no concern, and we managed to send away the others I mentioned. We intend that you keep them away.”

  Rodian tensed. Her words were too close to the tone of Sykion’s “request” for his presence. “Who are these interlopers? What did they do to earn so much concern . . . and fear?”

  Hawes said nothing, and Rodian chose a different tactic, putting the burden on her, if the sages wanted his help.

  “I’ll need complete descriptions if my men are to—”

  “High Premin Sykion requests that you simply man the gate for now. Allow no one in or out without clear authorization from a member of the Premin Council.”

  Rodian’s jaw muscles twitched. “With due respect, Premin, that won’t—”

  Hawes turned away, cutting him off. “I am certain Premin Sykion will make all clear to you soon.”

  He wasn’t being put off that easily, and quick-stepped around to cut her off. Hawes didn’t look the slightest bit intimidated.

  “What does Journeyor Hygeorht have to do with this?” he demanded. “You should know that much . . . you had better, for what I just saw.”

  Rodian was still unsettled by the sight of Wynn being dragged off. For any trouble that had spilled beyond these walls in the past year, Wynn had usually been at the heart of it. But if they violated her legal rights, then that was all he needed to put the whole Premin Council, including Hawes, up against a wall.