Between Their Worlds

by Barb; J. C. Hendee

  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.

  No.

  Wynn gasped in frustration and grabbed for his fingers, struggling to get the charcoal. It took no effort for Chane to jerk his hand free. He lifted the charcoal up, beyond her reach, and mouthed no again, this time with an incensed glower. Rather than make a futile jump to snatch the charcoal, Wynn smacked him in the chest.

  Chane’s eyes widened as Wynn jerked her hand back with a gasp of pain. A brief snarl filled the quiet room, and both of them froze at the sudden noise.

  Shade sat up on the bed with her ears flattened and her jowls pulled back. But she wasn’t snarling at Chane this time. Shade’s memory-words rose sharply in Wynn’s head—in Wynn’s own voice.

  —Wynn . . . quiet—

  The last word had probably been stolen from some memory of Wynn’s in which she’d admonished the dog.

  Shade glanced meaningfully at the closed door,
where Dorian must be standing just outside. Even Chane paused at that, glancing the same way as his hand dropped lower.

  Wynn grabbed the end of the charcoal stick and snapped it off before Chane could pull it away again. She went at the journal, scrawling rapidly, and then shoved the journal at his face.

  Get the scroll out of the keep!

  The scroll—Chane’s scroll—held the only hope of clues to finding the two remaining orbs. Wynn had repeatedly learned the hard way that anything she recorded or acquired might be taken from her. As for her journals, burned and beyond anyone’s reach, she’d read everything they had contained to Shade, until the dog had memorized their entire contents. No one could take anything from the powerful memory skills of a majay-hì like Shade.

  That wasn’t possible with the scroll.

  Its inner writing, in an ancient Sumanese dialect, had been scribed in the black fluids of a long-gone Noble Dead, and then the scroll’s entire surface had been covered in dark ink, thus hiding the poem beneath. Only by calling upon mantic, elemental sight could Wynn alone see the script beneath the coating. Until she could translate the entire poem, they couldn’t lose that scroll.

  It could not be discovered here.

  Hurrying to her bed, she pulled the scroll case from under her mattress. Chane had left it with her for safekeeping before his trip to Dhredze Seatt. She thrust it at him. Looking down, his features flattened as he took it from her and slipped it into the back of his belt, beneath his cloak.

  Wynn rushed back to her desk and began writing again. If Chane got in the council’s way, he could be in actual trouble. He could be arrested by city authorities, if not dealt with directly by Sykion or even Hawes. As an undead, no one could see him fall dormant at sunrise, should they manage to put him in captivity. The only problem was that the keep’s outer portcullis was now closed. She’d heard the gears creaking and clanking while Dorian dragged her up to her room.

  Chane would have to sneak out through the library’s upper window, the same way Wynn had snuck him in when he’d first arrived in Calm Seatt. Of course, that meant they’d have to use a ploy to get Dorian away from the door and beyond sight of the courtyard.

  By the time Wynn finished writing, Chane had already drawn near and read every word over her shoulder. He straightened up as he stared out the room’s one narrow window. There wasn’t time to ponder his stubborn reluctance; that would only give him another chance to argue.

  Wynn crouched to dig through the gear tucked in her pack from their last trip, looking for a flint. She couldn’t find it, and when she rose, she tore all the pages with their written conversation out of the journal, writing one last line on the top sheet.

  Take these with you and burn them.

  She didn’t care if he thought she was paranoid. Even a hastily written conversation held bits and pieces she didn’t want found.

  Chane took the torn pages with a nod, but he dropped them on the stone floor. Wynn froze in puzzlement as his eyes closed halfway, focusing on the sheets. She realized too late what he was doing. It had been a long time since she’d seen him do it.

  Before Wynn could grab Chane’s arm or even risk a whisper, a glow brightened beneath—through—the stack of torn pages. Almost instantly, a small flame sprang from one corner. Another sheet’s corner and then another on the stack caught, as well. As the pages burned, so did Wynn’s temper, until the whole stack was eaten away to black ash.

  Wynn glared up at Chane.

  All he did was frown, briefly raising his hands as if dumbfounded, and then Shade sneezed. The dog backed up along the bed, snorting the whole way.

  Wynn swatted trails of smoke in the air. She pointed at her nose and then at the door, where a journeyor still waited within hearing—and smelling.

  Chane rolled his eyes and went for his packs. When he flattened against the wall on the door’s nearer side, Wynn hurried to Shade, passing memories as quickly as she could. Thankfully, Shade understood and didn’t argue this time. With all of them ready, Wynn went for the door. And then she faltered, thinking of that one moment when Chane had looked out the window.

  Before she’d come out of the keep’s main doors, she’d peered at the last window of the barrack’s upper floor—her window. No one was there and no light shone from within her room. She’d been gone so long, certainly he couldn’t have been standing at the window all that time. Had Chane been simply waiting, perhaps lost in reading one of his own books, or . . .

  How much had he seen?

  Wynn opened the door to her room, and Dorian immediately spun into view from its left side.

  “What?” he asked sharply.

  “How much longer?” she demanded. “I thought Premin Sykion wanted to see me.”

  “However long it takes,” he answered. “You’ll stay put until then.”

  Dorian’s gaze drifted beyond Wynn, perhaps to Shade. Then he squinted, wrinkling his nose. Dorian sniffed and snorted, and Wynn could’ve punched Chane right then.

  “Very well,” Wynn countered, taking a forward step. “Come on, Shade.”

  Dorian blocked her way. “As I said, you will wait.”

  This wasn’t the way Wynn had wanted things. If she went with Shade, the two of them could have stalled Dorian longer together. There was nothing to be done about it, and her plan changed.

  “Shade needs to go out and that can’t wait,” Wynn said flatly. “Unless you want her doing her business in the passage. If so, you can clean it up, because she’s not doing it in my room.”

  Dorian faltered in silence.

  Wynn glanced back, but Shade hadn’t moved. With her back to Dorian, she glared at Shade and mouthed, Get going.

  Shade looked at Dorian and then Wynn. With a curl of jowl, she hopped off the bed and trotted for the doorway. Dorian quickly backed up, bumping into the passage’s far wall. Shade just turned down the passage toward the stairs.

  “She prefers the grove in the bailey’s back,” Wynn instructed, “below the northern tower.”

  Dorian stood there, his lips barely parted, caught between a stray “wolf” wandering in the keep and his instructions. Wynn folded her arms and waited, daring him not to go after Shade. Dorian pushed Wynn back and grabbed the door’s handle.

  Wynn had to shift aside when he jerked the door with a slam. She exhaled in relief and scurried to the window, waiting to see Shade lead the annoying “guard” off and out of sight.

  Magiere still fumed as she passed the bailey gate and kept on toward the castle’s southern corner. She looked for any way to get in that wasn’t in plain sight. The bailey wall was at least twenty feet high in most places. Leesil might be able to scale it and then throw down a rope to haul her and Chap up. But this wide street, comprised of the backs of shops and other buildings, not to mention the keep towers themselves, some of their windows glowing from lights within, was all too exposed.

  How could they possibly get over the wall without being spotted? Late at night, later than now, perhaps, though she still hadn’t seen what lay around the castle’s grounds along its three other sides.

  “We can’t just wander about out here,” Leesil warned. “This isn’t some sages’ barracks in Bela, tucked into a forgotten corner of that city. Look around you!”

  She had, and he knew it, but her guilt wouldn’t let her stop. They’d left Wynn behind again, and this time it wasn’t due to Chap’s insistence that the sage would be safer here.

  Magiere was sick of complications inevitably falling on everyone who passed through her life. At least if she kept those who mattered close to her, she might have a chance to stand between them and whatever came, until she found a way to put an end to all of this. Leesil had to understand what that meant; they were not leaving Wynn behind again.

  If she couldn’t find a way into this keep, a way to Wynn, she’d make one.

  Magiere stopped and turned about, abandoning her search of the castle’s bailey wall and high towers.

  “What now?” Leesil ask
ed.

  Chap hopped out of Magiere’s way as she stalked past Leesil and back toward the bailey gate.

  Leesil faltered, watching as Magiere strode back along the bailey wall. At a loss, he looked at Chap, who just stood there, as well.

  “Do something, you mangy mutt!” Leesil whispered. “Aren’t you supposed to be the all-knowing big guide and guardian here?”

  Chap curled a jowl in reply and took off at a trot, and Leesil bit back sudden shame for his outburst. He knew he hadn’t been fair, and he broke into a jog to follow. Getting Magiere to listen had become just as hard for Chap.

  They caught up as Magiere grabbed the handle of one side of the bailey gate.