Between Their Worlds_A Novel of the Noble Dead

by Barb Hendee

  “Nothing,” Dänvârfij replied, though she would take any excuse to fill the nagging silence. “I will get it just the same.”

  As straightforward as their purpose was, its execution had proven anything but simple. Even as the rift among her caste had grown, she could not have foreseen—

  The window opened from the outside.

  “Fréthfâre,” a voice breathed, as someone climbed into the room.

  Dänvârfij was not alarmed and calmly turned her head. She knew the sound of every member’s movements, like a second voice. But when Én’nish landed lightly on the floor, she wore a makeshift bandage around her upper left arm. Three tall forms—Rhysís, Eywodan, and Tavithê—followed after Én’nish before Dänvârfij’s stomach tightened and she rose to her feet.

  Rhysís was bleeding from a head wound, and Tavithê took a moment to check it. Tavithê’s cloak and tunic had been slashed open across his chest, and a slow stain spread into the forest gray cloth at his shoulder.

  Wy’lanvi and Owain were missing.

  “What happened?” Fréthfâre demanded.

  “Where are Wy’lanvi and Owain?” Dänvârfij asked.

  Én’nish hesitated, as if not knowing which question to answer first. She was another team member for whom Dänvârfij held great reservations. The smallest and youngest of the team had a blemished history among the caste. She had even been cast aside by her own jeóin.

  Én’nish was rash, overrun by her own emotions of hatred, born from an even deeper grief than Dänvârfij could truly imagine. All here knew that Én’nish had mated with her bóijtäna—prebetrothed—before their true betrothal and subsequent bonding. As with all an’Cróan, intimacy linked two people in a way that any ritual of bonding could never represent. It was why a period of waiting was always required before commitment or the actual pairing. Én’nish would now suffer the loss of Groyt’ashia like a sickness that could never be cured.

  It had been Fréthfâre who had brought Én’nish back into the caste. All Én’nish wanted, her whole reason for hounding Fréthfâre to be included, was the blood of Léshil.

  “Answer—now!” Dänvârfij commanded.

  “Wy’lanvi was in position, but he never appeared.” Én’nish said quickly. “Owain circled back to look for him, in case—”

  “Position?” Fréthfâre cut in. “For what?”

  Én’nish shook her head hard, as if to clear it. “We spotted our quarry. All three of them, leaving the guild’s castle.”

  “Here?” Dänvârfij said, taking a step toward Én’nish. “In the city?”

  Én’nish’s eyes shifted several times to Fréthfâre and back before she answered.

  “Yes. We decided to follow. When they headed into one of the more barren, decrepit districts, it was decided to try to take them before—”

  “It was decided? You mean you decided!” Dänvârfij returned, for she knew how this had truly come about. “And when were you given lead in our purpose? You were to watch . . . and report!”

  “Dänvârfij, enough,” Fréthfâre said. “Continue, Én’nish.”

  Én’nish turned fully to Fréthfâre, ignoring Dänvârfij.

  “We thought to capture one or more of them—tonight—and bring them to you,” Én’nish went on. “Our position was as good as could be . . . in a narrow, nearly deserted street. Four of us blocked the street’s ends, prepared to drive them into a side path, where Wy’lanvi would cut them off. Owain stayed on the rooftops to cover us, but . . .”

  She trailed off, and Dänvârfij knew what she was about to say.

  “Again . . . Brot’ân’duivé,” Fréthfâre whispered.

  Dänvârfij briefly closed her eyes; Owain would never find Wy’lanvi.

  When they had left their homeland, they had been eleven in count. Dänvârfij had counseled Fréthfâre in choosing three trios of their caste. Never before had so many of the Anmaglâhk taken up the same purpose together. Their task had been that dire in the eyes of Most Aged Father, who greatly feared any device of the Ancient Enemy remaining in human hands.

  Eleven had left together, but someone else had shadowed them. Even along the way, after the second death and before they knew for certain, Dänvârfij could not bring herself to believe it. Only on the night when she had seen his unmistakable, immense shadow with her own eyes did she acknowledge the truth.

  Eight had reached this city, and now seven remained. The traitorous Brot’ân’duivé had been picking them off one by one, across half the world. A greimasg’äh, a master among them, was killing his own.

  There had been no deaths among them since a moon before they reached Calm Seatt. Dänvârfij had hoped they had lost Brot’ân’duivé. It had been a very desperate hope.

  She glanced at Rhysís. He appeared oblivious of his head wound as he met her gaze. Of all she had selected with Fréthfâre, she knew him best and had never seen him openly angry before. He was slender and thin-lipped, always wore his hair loose; it was now matted on his forehead with his own blood. His eyes smoldered in his silence. Rhysís had liked Wy’lanvi, the youngest of their team, and had often played “elder brother” when the need arose.

  Dänvârfij took a step back, but he moved closer, looking into her face as he whispered, “In silence and in shadows.”

  She did not need his words, the creed of their caste, to remind her of their purpose. The mission was all that mattered. Their targets were here in the city. Though only six of her remaining team were still able—as Fréthfâre was not—that would be enough.

  “Let me see to your head wound,” she said. “Fréthfâre, will you tend Tavithê’s shoulder? Én’nish, how bad is your arm?”

  Én’nish was not listening, and began pacing, exhaling hissing breaths.

  “I had him,” she spat. “I had my wire around his throat.”

  “Brot’ân’duivé?” Fréthfâre asked in surprise.

  Dänvârfij almost scoffed at such a notion. “Léshil,” she guessed out loud, watching Én’nish with growing concern.

  Vengeance was like a disease, and Brot’ân’duivé was the carrier that kept spreading it among them. Dänvârfij looked warily upon Rhysís again.

  “That is not all,” he said quietly. “He was not alone. An archer on the rooftops hit Én’nish and then fired at Owain.”

  Dänvârfij grew cold and shook her head. “No . . . besides Brot’ân’duivé, who would fire on their own caste?”

  No one answered her, but Rhysís would not have said it unless he was certain. Dänvârfij took a clearer look at Én’nish’s arm as Fréthfâre unwrapped it.

  “Are you disabled?” she asked.

  “No, it was only through the skin. Eywodan broke and pulled the arrow easily.”

  “Did you double back to follow their escape?” Dänvârfij asked.

  Rhysís glanced away, and even Én’nish remained silent. Tavithê settled in a chair to suffer Fréthfâre’s ministrations and shook his head.

  “We could not,” he said bluntly. “With three of us injured and Wy’lanvi missing, our only course was to retreat . . . with the majay-hì harrying us. Only Owain turned back, once we lost the majay-hì.”

  Dänvârfij nodded. Tavithê had broad shoulders for an elf. His grasp of human languages had never been strong, but he was almost unparalleled in hand-to-hand combat. Dänvârfij could only assume he had been fighting Brot’ân’duivé to take a wound like that.

  Tavithê had been correct. Better to regroup and plan rather than to counterstrike blindly in defeat.

  “This will have to be sewn up,” Fréthfâre said, peering at Tavithê’s wound.

  Tavithê grimaced. He would fight four armed opponents at once but did not care for needles. Dänvârfij decided further questions, ones that Fréthfâre had not seen fit to ask, could wait.

  Pieces of the evening were still missing. She needed to learn everything as quickly as possible and reestablish a watch on the guild’s castle. Then it would be time to report to Most Aged Father. All
that mattered now was acquiring their targets.

  Eywodan, the oldest of the team, had not spoken so far. He kept glancing out the window, perhaps watching for Owain’s return. Something needed to be done, and questions were all Dänvârfij had left, regardless of the wounded.

  “Tell me everything, step by step,” she said to Eywodan, “beginning at the Guild of Sagecraft.”

  Chane stood on the docks of Beranlômr Bay, watching two sailors near a small, two-masted schooner unloading crates from a wagon. One of them stumbled getting down out of the wagon and then staggered, thumping the crate against the wagon’s tailboard. Clattering and clinks of glass sounded from inside the crate.

  “Easy with that!” a third, wide man ordered. “There’s a score of bottles of spiced mead for a thänæ in there. Break ’em, and you’ll be making up the cost for the next season!”

  Both sailors flinched, taking greater care as they crept up the plank onto the schooner’s deck.

  The mention of a thänæ—an honored one among the dwarves—was fortunate for Chane.

  “Are you the captain of this ship?” he asked, approaching the wide-chested man. “And bound for Dhredze Seatt?”

  The man looked him up and down.

  Chane was well aware that he no longer resembled a well-dressed young nobleman, much as he once had. His boots were too dusty and more worn than even his clothes. He spoke Numanese well, but his accent and maimed voice would always draw some attention.

  “And if I am?” the man challenged.

  “I am a friend of Shirvêsh Mallet at the temple of Bedzâ’kenge,” Chane explained. “I need a letter to reach him as quickly as possible.”

  Chane pulled out his coin pouch and loosened its tie. There were few coins in it, and he was not about to show them until he heard the cost. It should not be much, considering the captain already headed for the needed destination.

  The captain’s expression shifted with concern. “Mallet? Is the letter important?”

  “Yes.”

  The captain held out his hand. “I’ll make sure he receives it, soon as we reach port.”

  Chane took a little relief as he tilted the pouch to pour out coins. “How much?”

  The captain shook his head. “Mallet’s done me a good turn more than once. Gained me business among the clans of his tribe.”

  Chane blinked in hesitation. As the son of a harsh father, a noble in his homeland during his life and later as an undead in hiding, preying on the living, he had been given little in his life that had not cost him in the end. Certainly, rarely, had it ever come from a stranger.

  He did not know what to say, at first, but he had no wish to be obliged to anyone.

  “I have dwarven slugs of no use to me,” he offered. “Take some.”

  The captain shrugged with a half smile. “As you wish.”

  Chane counted out three copper slugs with holes in their center, not truly knowing what they were worth. The captain took them along with the folded-up paper, and he looked it over.

  “No addressment?” the captain asked, for Chane had not marked the outside wrapping sheet.

  “Not necessary,” he answered. “Shirvêsh Mallet will understand.”

  “He’ll get by midmorning,” the captain said with a nod, and tromped off up the ramp to his ship.

  Indeed, Chane had not addressed the letter, for he could not. Its ultimate destination was not the hands of Shirvêsh Mallet. He needed help, and this was his only method of sending for it, and hopefully Mallet would quickly pass it on to the true recipient.

  CHAPTER 8

  PAWL A’SEATT CROSSED the small front room of his scribe shop, the Upright Quill, and locked the door for the night. The space was neat and sparse, with only an old counter across the room’s back and a few wooden display stands supporting open books with ornate examples of the shop’s script work. He flipped the counter’s folding section to step behind it and checked that everything beneath it had been stored away in orderly fashion. Finally, he turned to head through the right door behind the counter and into the workroom.

  The rear of any scriptorium was quite different from the outer room for customers. That of the Upright Quill was filled with tall, slanted scribing tables and matching stools, along with one large desk and a chair.

  Although it was halfway to night’s first bell, lanterns still hung about, filling the space with saffron-colored light. Stacks and sheaves of blank, crisp paper and a few of the more expansive and traditional parchments were piled on shelves lining all the walls, except for the space where there was a heavy rear door. There were also bottles of varied inks, jars of drying talc and sand, binding materials, and other sundry tools and supplies. Everywhere lay scattered quills, blotting pads, bracing sticks to keep a scribe’s hand off the page, and trimming knives.

  It was rather chaotic compared to what patrons saw out front.

  Most of Pawl’s staff had gone home for the night, including his master scribe, Teagan. But he still awaited the return of two apprentices—Liam and young Imaret—sent off on an errand. He never sent anyone out alone after dark.

  Pacing the floor of the workroom, he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. Although a few strands of it appeared grayed, his face looked young. Glancing down, he noticed a smudge of chalk on his charcoal gray suede jerkin, but he didn’t try to rub it off. He was too preoccupied.

  Spring had edged in and the nights were growing warmer, but Pawl had been trapped in the same stalled state since last autumn. Two seasons past, his shop—along with four others—had been almost overwhelmed by work from the Guild of Sagecraft. The guild had undertaken an enormous translation project. Pages upon pages of translator’s notes from a wild array of ancient tongues were sent out for transcription into more legible copies. Later came final transcription to finished pages. But the languages didn’t matter, for all materials were written in the sages’ Begaine syllabary, a script that few nonsages could fathom.

  Though no one knew it, Pawl was one of the exceptions. A number of pieces he’d read had left him shaken.

  He’d read every page that passed in and out of his shop, but there were too many gaps and disconnections. Likely the guild’s premins had purposefully made sure that no one shop, no one scribe, worked on any lengthy, contiguous passages.

  Though Pawl had remained stoic and self-possessed, he had grown frantic for more information, as the pieces he’d seen didn’t answer his questions. His mind had churned with an urge he’d put aside so long ago. Then, two sages carrying back finished work from his shop to the guild had been murdered in an alley.

  Everything changed—worsened—after that.

  Before all of this, pages sent to varied shops were always mixed. Pawl had pieced together only a little of what he did read and much of it was incomplete. But after the murders, the Premin Council decided to have all transcription work completed inside their grounds, and only one scriptorium’s scribes were to be brought in to continue transcription.

  Pawl a’Seatt made certain his scribes were the ones chosen, but it had cost him to make it so. Unfortunately, even then, his access to the work became more limited.

  While on guild grounds, his scribes were individually cloistered. None of them saw what the others worked on, and none had the gift of memory that Imaret did.

  Pawl himself was cut off almost completely.

  On occasion, he was allowed to check on his scribes on the pretense of reviewing the quality of their work, but he was always watched. He could never pause too long at the shoulder of one of his people or it would be obvious that his attention was on the content and not the quality of those sheets.

  He closed his eyes, and unwanted memories came . . . or fragments more disjointed than those snippets of ancient writings sent out for transcription.

  Had it truly been a thousand years—or was it less or more? Like so many among the fearful masses of nations long forgotten, he had gone to war, or tried to. Had he been compelled by a father, a c
onscription agent, or a tribal elder? Or had it been his own choice? Memories were sketchy things, like the simplistic renderings of a historian who hadn’t experienced the events he recorded.

  Pawl remembered hints in the lengthy shadows of time that he’d gone south along the western coast, like so many other young men. He had no memory of actual war and comrades-in-arms. He did know that he never made it that far. But he remembered a white-faced woman.

  Her shiny black hair hung in wild tendrils almost to the waist of her oddly scintillating robe. That fabric, like silk or elven shéot’a, was covered in swirling patterns of flowers. It covered her small, lithe body, shifting over her diminutive curves. That full wrap robe or gown was like no attire of any people he’d ever seen. Had she come from somewhere far away, perhaps beyond the western ocean? And her eyes . . .

  He would never forget her eyes.

  Almond-shaped and slightly slanted, they were not those of an elf perhaps suffering under some paling illness. She was far too short for that race. Her irises, seemingly black for an instant, had changed to something akin to clear crystal. Cold and uncaring as they fixed on him, they held hungered obsession as she had stepped closer on the rocky shore.

  Pawl could no longer remember if he had touched her. He remembered only awaking beneath the surf, his lungs filled with saltwater.

  Even beneath the water, in the darkness, his eyes could see, except for the cloud of blood floating around him. He choked in panic at first, and the chill water rushed in and out of his chest as he tried to breathe while clawing for the surface. When the breaking surf tumbled his body onto the stony shore, he was still trying to breathe . . . and didn’t need to. He rolled onto his hands and knees and heaved out seawater in his lungs. Air rushed in to replace water, but it did not matter.

  So much could be forgotten, and the longer one existed, the more one lost. Only those memories most precious, most horrid, lasted until they alone remained, disjointed and disconnected among newer memories that replaced the ones fading again and again over centuries.

  And where was this woman he had seen only once on the night he’d awakened as from drowning . . . with his throat torn open, his body cold to the core?