by Barb Hendee
“The guild is closed?” Tavishaw asked in surprise.
Pawl immediately placed a hand on Imaret’s back and herded her and Nikolas into the shop’s outer room. He would never get Imaret back to work while Nikolas was here.
“How did you know about the guild?” Nikolas asked.
“I was there last night,” Imaret said. “I was worried for you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” she echoed indignantly. “Because you were locked inside!”
Since the deaths of Elias and Jeremy in a nearby alley, Imaret grew frantic whenever she didn’t know the whereabouts of the remaining few she cared about. On a more practical consideration, Pawl was concerned by how this affected her work. The only way to stabilize that was to allow this meeting to play out—and perhaps gain some insight for himself.
Nikolas frowned. “Imaret, I’m fine in there. No one even notices me.”
At this evasion, Pawl seized control.
“What has happened?” he asked pointedly. “Why were the Shyldfälches summoned?”
Nikolas looked up at him. A sudden desperation turned the young sage pale just before he looked away.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“You don’t know?” Imaret asked.
Pawl raised one finger at her, and she fell silent. His centuries of experience with people told him that the young man was dying to speak, to pour out his personal troubles. When Imaret was about to go at Nikolas again, Pawl rested his hand on her fragile shoulder. She looked up at him, possibly annoyed, but remained quiet.
“Journeyor Hygeorht has been confined,” Nikolas finally offered.
“Why?” Pawl asked.
“I don’t know.”
Pawl’s frustration began to match Imaret’s, but this time the truth of Nikolas’s answer was plain on his troubled face. The young sage was at a loss.
“Why did you come here?” Pawl asked.
Nikolas still wouldn’t look at him. “I thought to check and see if Premin Renäld’s project was finished, maybe bring it back, and . . . I just needed to get out for a while.”
Pawl could see this was not true. Why would Nikolas lie?
“The transcription is not quite finished,” he said. “I’ll have it delivered late this afternoon.”
His words appeared to make Nikolas only more miserable. He was tempted to use intimidation to force Nikolas to talk, but he resisted. Whatever had happened with Wynn Hygeorht, Nikolas—if he knew anything more—would eventually tell Imaret something. And Pawl would hear of it.
“All right,” Nikolas replied, turning away, but he stopped briefly to look at Imaret. “I have to get back, but I’ll try to see you—both of you—as soon as I can.” He attempted a weak smile. “If nothing else, Captain Rodian won’t last much longer. He’s been at it with one or another premin since last night and looks like he’s eaten nothing but raw lemons for days.”
Nikolas slipped out the front door.
“Bye, Nikolas,” Imaret called after him.
“Back to work,” Pawl ordered.
She shuffled through the opened counter section and into the back room.
Pawl walked to a front window and watched Nikolas head south along the street. Once the sage was out of the line of sight, Pawl stepped out the shop’s front door. He spotted Nikolas’s gray robe a block down and followed until the young sage turned the corner. When Pawl reached that intersection and peered around the candle shop there, he stopped.
A dark shadow emerged from the mouth of an alley running behind the shops. Pawl watched a long-legged black wolf, taller than any he’d seen, fall in beside Nikolas.
It was the same animal that had been with Wynn on the night she’d faced that black-robed undead outside his shop. Another undead had been there with her, one that Pawl should’ve dispatched for invading his city. But doing so with Journeyor Hygeorht present would have raised questions from her about him.
Pausing there in the street, Pawl let his thoughts turn.
Wynn Hygeorht had been confined. The guild had been locked down by the city guard, likely at the request of the Premin Council. All work on the translation project had ceased. Nikolas was full of something he was dying to speak of and yet would not. Now Wynn’s black wolf escorted the nervous young sage out and about the city.
Wynn was the source, though not the cause, for both Pawl’s reignited anger and his determination for its remedy, to seek answers regarding the white woman, his murderer and maker. Wynn had been the one to return with those ancient texts from afar. Whatever was happening—whatever had halted the translation project—it was somehow all wrapped around her. And she was beyond reach inside the guild’s keep.
Pawl walked back toward his shop in silent, cold tension.
Chap and Leanâlhâm lingered by a street corner one block up the mainway from the guild’s bailey gate, and he was itching all over.
Leesil was going to pay for this, one way or another.
Chap dropped on his haunches and pulled up one rear leg to scratch himself again.
“Bârtva’na!” Leanâlhâm whispered in panic, slipping into her own tongue. “Do not!”
A little cloud of black dust rose as Chap scratched. He tried to rub his itching face with a forepaw. All that did was raise a puff of soot around his face, and he sneezed.
“Please, Ch—majay-hì,” Leanâlhâm insisted. “You will rub it off and be noticed.”
Like her people, Leanâlhâm had an aversion to anyone imposing a name upon one of the sacred guardians of her homeland. She reached for his face, perhaps to stop his paw, but then paused. Whether she thought it irreverent to touch him or that he was just filthy, he did not know.
Chap was covered in soot. Or at least his back, tail, head, and most of his face were.
Disguise or not, it was wholly uncomfortable, and it was all Leesil’s doing. Chap grumbled under his breath, unable to stop fidgeting and scratching. He was going to get Leesil back for this.
Before he and Leanâlhâm had left the inn, a plan had been made. Once again, Chap let the others proceed without interrupting. It gave them a sense of control, though he had his preparation in mind for how to contact Wynn. That deception was especially necessary for Magiere and Osha, who were the most worried about Leanâlhâm.
Their basic plan was sensible. He and Leanâlhâm would approach the gatehouse portcullis. If no one recognized Chap or reacted to him, Leanâlhâm would present herself as a visitor seeking Wynn.
Unlike Osha, Leanâlhâm had been taught Belaskian, the Farlands dominant language, by her deceased uncle and grandfather. Brot’an had tutored her in some basic Numanese, although how the old butcher had learned the tongue so quickly still bothered Chap. Leanâlhâm’s heavy Elvish accent would simply support her guise as an acquaintance from afar, here to visit Wynn.
If she was refused entry, then it could be assumed that Wynn was indeed a prisoner—but her location would be in question. If Leanâlhâm was let in by guards but then refused by the sages, at least they would know Wynn was still on guild grounds. And in that event, hopefully, Chap could at least gain the inner courtyard in order to try what he wanted to accomplish.
That mattered the most. Somehow, they had to at least reach the courtyard.
Leanâlhâm had been ordered—both by Brot’an and Magiere—that at the first sign of trouble, she was to get out any way possible; Chap would take care of himself. The girl had promised this. Magiere had also instructed her to pay attention to any unsought memories that suddenly surfaced in her mind. This confused Leanâlhâm quite a bit, and even more when she was told why, for it was the only way Chap could warn or instruct her.
The problem, of course, was that Chap had not spent enough time watching for Leanâlhâm’s memories. He could only call back a person’s own memories that he had already seen in that same person’s mind. Leanâlhâm was instructed that if she suddenly remembered—for no reason—their flight in secret from the attack of the anmaglâhk, sh
e was to turn and flee. She had so badly wanted to be useful that she would have promised anything.
However, the prospect of this task and the reality were two very different things. Now Leanâlhâm glanced down nervously at Chap.
She was fully cloaked with her hood pulled up, and he could not help feeling humiliated by the piece of cord around his neck as a makeshift leash. Yes, it had been his idea, and with the other end clenched in the girl’s hand, he had led her and not the other way around. Still, his discomfort got the best of him, and he disliked even the illusion of being anyone’s pet.
Chap was well aware Sgäile and Gleann had protected Leanâlhâm from the world with a vengeance. Then Brot’an and Osha had taken up that role. This entire endeavor was outside the girl’s experience. He wished he could reassure her, even if it was another lie.
She seemed to read his expression and said, “I am not afraid.”
He could see that was not true.
“It is all right,” she insisted. “I am ready.”
Stepping out, Chap pulled on the leash cord until she stepped in beside him. When they finally passed through the bailey gate and approached the closed portcullis, he craned his head, peering through its broad beams. He saw only one guard standing inside, but he could not see much of the courtyard down the gatehouse tunnel.
Leanâlhâm came within arm’s reach of the portcullis, and then Chap spotted another guard stepping into view at the tunnel’s far end. Both guards wore red tabards over chain vests, and the nearer one had a helmet with a nose guard. The one pacing beyond the tunnel’s far end had sandy-colored hair and a close-trimmed beard across only his jaw above a clean-shaven throat. His boots clopped softly on the courtyard’s stone as he passed beyond sight.
“May . . . enter?” Leanâlhâm asked in broken Numanese.
“What’s your business?” the closer guard questioned, glancing once at Chap.
“I am here . . . visit friend . . . Wynn Hygeorht.”
The following silence left Chap tense. He was uncertain why until he realized the boots on the inner courtyard’s stones had stopped echoing down the tunnel.
“No visitors today, miss,” the guard said politely. “I’m sorry.”
“Please . . . I come long way.”
The sound of footsteps resumed. Chap spotted the guard with the close-trimmed beard turn into the tunnel’s far end and head for the portcullis.
Rodian couldn’t yet see who was outside the portcullis, but he was almost sure he’d heard the name of Wynn Hygeorht. As he approached the gatehouse tunnel’s outer mouth, he was surprised to see a slender girl—perhaps a young woman—in a full cloak with her hood pulled forward. Beside her was a very tall, mottled black and gray dog . . . or was it a wolf?
The girl was definitely no sage by her attire, but Rodian’s guardsman partially blocked his view of the dog.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just a girl . . . an elven girl,” Guardsman Wickham answered with a nod. “Here to visit, she says.”
As Wickham turned, he exposed the dog to Rodian’s full view. The animal was indeed wolflike but taller, nearly as tall as the dogs used to hunt them.
“Who are you here to see?” he asked, stepping up to look through the portcullis beams.
The girl, or rather young woman, by her height, backstepped and dropped her head. Her face wasn’t clear to his view, with the hood hanging to hide her eyes, but the dog was plain to see. Its strange blue eyes, tall ears, and tapered muzzle reminded Rodian of . . . Shade. Wynn’s animal could be of the same breed, although he’d never before seen another like her.
The young woman hadn’t answered his question.
Rodian worried he might frighten her off, and he wanted to know more about this odd pair. If she ran, he wouldn’t have time to catch her with the portcullis down.
“Wynn Hygeorht,” the young woman finally confirmed.
Rodian’s first instinct was to arrest her on the spot and question her, though he’d still have to get her to stay put until the portcullis opened. Perhaps he might learn even more by letting this visitor actually see Wynn . . . with him present, of course.
“Open up!” he called above.
The young woman inched backward again, though the dog didn’t, and the cord leashing the dog pulled taut and stopped her. The portcullis ground upward, and before it had even cleared Rodian’s head, he ducked under.
“I’ll take you to her,” he said. Now he could see inside her hood.
She was pretty, even beautiful, with the large, slanted eyes of a Lhoin’na, though her skin appeared slightly darker than most of those people. She was indeed young, though that didn’t always mean much with an elf. Pretty women did not affect Rodian, but what struck him the most was the way her green eyes shifted nervously about, always watching everything, always watching . . .
Rodian tensed. All Lhoin’na had amber-colored eyes, not green. Wynn Hygeorht had a penchant for the strangest of companions.
He took care with his manner, yet she still appeared afraid, and this raised his suspicions more. What was she hiding? He gestured down the tunnel with one hand.
“This way.”
Turning his back on her, he walked up the tunnel but listened for the sound of her steps. What he heard first was the click of claws on stone. So the dog had immediately followed, and only then came the young woman’s footfalls. When Rodian emerged into the courtyard, he barely had a chance to glance back and make certain she was there.
“Captain, what are you doing?”
Rodian looked ahead to find Domin High-Tower stomping toward him out of the keep’s main doors. He let out a deep, slow breath and went to cut off the domin before the dwarf frightened Wynn’s strange visitor even more.
Chap had gotten what he needed in entering the courtyard, but when he spotted the stout dwarven sage, he knew he might have only moments. He hoped what he was about to try would work, though he tried it only once before.
On the way to the Pock Peaks in search of the first orb, Wynn had been cut off from everyone and lost in a blizzard. He had searched hard for her, but without a line of sight, he had no way to speak into her thoughts. He had tried, anyway, and it had worked for one instance.
Leanâlhâm froze beside Chap as he looked to the right, to where Wynn had been hauled off the night before. There was no sign of her in any of the windows of the two-level building flush against the keep’s southeast wall. Chap tried calling to her, anyway.
Wynn, I am here.
The captain sidestepped into the dwarven sage’s path. “Can I help you, Domin?”
“I was passing the entry hall and heard the portcullis gears,” the dwarf answered, not at all politely.
Chap scanned the courtyard’s left side. The building there had no windows, just three doors along its length spanning the whole courtyard’s side. A pair of double bay doors in the left half had been set high at its second level.
He tried again. Wynn . . . are you here? Where are you?
Unless he actually saw her, this whole attempt could be pointless. Even if she heard him, as she had in the blizzard, she would not be able to answer if she were locked away. She could hear his voice in her thoughts, but he could only hear her true voice. However, if he could at least see her, he would know where she was, and he could tell her they would come for her.
His anxiety grew. What if she was no longer here? Had they been lured inside . . . into a trap?
“Why have you raised the gate?” the dwarf demanded. “I see no sages coming or going. Supplies do not arrive at this time!”
Chap looked beyond the dwarf and the captain to the main keep ahead. A few narrow window slits marked its two upper floors. No one looked out of their panes, no one from whom he might glimpse any memories in the hope of stumbling on Wynn’s exact location. He felt Leanâlhâm’s small hand drop on his neck, and her fingers clenched his sooty fur. Perhaps in fear she’d finally overcome her reluctance to touch him. He glanced up, wo
ndering what had caused this.
Leanâlhâm was looking up to the building on the courtyard’s right side. In the last window on the second level, Wynn stood wide-eyed, looking down at them with her hands flattened against the panes.
Chap almost sagged in relief, and then Wynn’s brow furrowed. A clear memory rose in his awareness as he watched her.
To his surprise, he became lost in it. He saw through her eyes as if he were she in a long-past moment. She—he—was locked up in Lord Darmouth’s keep in a small room.
The memory flickered, though the setting remained the same. She—he—was now closer to the room’s door. Light from one narrow window had changed, suggesting it was a different time of day. The door opened, and one of Darmouth’s armed men stood in the passage outside.
“I do not tell you how to run your affairs,” the captain retorted to the dwarf. “I fulfill my responsibilities as I see fit.”
In the window above, Wynn’s eyes closed, scrunching tight. The previous image went black in Chap’s mind, and something more rose out of that darkness. He began to see a face—no, several faces—of armed men. They were dressed like the guards here in the keep.
One last flash of memory in Wynn came to Chap—that of Darmouth’s guard coming to the other room’s door.
And Chap had his answer.
Wynn’s situation was more than some dispute with her superiors. She was indeed a prisoner, and these guards—this captain in the red tabard—now controlled her confinement.
Chap’s relief at finding her faded. The situation was more complicated than he had hoped.
We are coming . . . soon. Do nothing to make them move you elsewhere.
With her hands pressed against the glass, Wynn nodded, looking so hopeful that he hated to leave her.
Only moments had passed since the dwarven sage had first called out. Chap was fully aware the exchange with the captain could end quickly. Then the creaking sound of the portcullis beginning its descent echoed out of the gatehouse tunnel.
With a last look at Wynn, Chap backed toward the tunnel’s mouth, and Leanâlhâm followed without a sound.