Between Their Worlds

by Barb; J. C. Hendee

  Taln Lúcan looked no older than his early twenties, if not for the color of his hair. Since that night in the street, it had turned almost fully steel gray. His beard was the same if he didn’t keep it cleanly shaved, and if one looked closely, faint crow’s-feet framed his eyes.

  Rodian had had difficulty accepting Garrogh’s death, more than he’d expected, as had the men under his command. Garrogh, slovenly as he had been, was liked as well as respected. But within a moon, Rodian had been forced to select a replacement.

  He’d been sorely tempted to elevate Lúcan straight to lieutenant, thus skipping him over several orders of rank. He would’ve willingly faced the uproar from those with seniority in rank or years, but regulations wouldn’t permit it, so Lieutenant Branwell became his second-in-command. After all that had happened, Rodian still felt more comfortable with Lúcan, and promoted him from guardsman to corporal.

  It had been a year of deaths, letters, and reports to write. Perhaps it was no more so than any other, but this year had wounded Rodian, even unto his faith.

  Lúcan glanced sidelong at the sage and frowned as he looked at his captain. He shook his head, perhaps to express that he had no idea what the sage wanted here.

  Rodian fixed on the visitor. The young man was panting from a hard run—not a good sign.

  “Yes?” Rodian asked, not really wanting an answer.

  The sage simply held out a folded paper—yet another letter—and Rodian was slow in taking it. Once in his grip, he broke the wax seal with its imprint from the guild’s Premin Council. He snapped open the sheet and quickly scanned its content.

  To Captain Siweard Rodian,

  Shyldfälches Command, Calm Seatt, Malourné

  Rodian took a breath and let it out slowly. The official address and the reminder of his position were another bad sign.

  Your immediate assistance is required at the guild. Please bring an appropriate number of city guards to secure the grounds.

  Lady Tärtgyth Sykion, High Premin

  Guild of Sagecraft at Calm Seatt, Malourné

  Short and to the point, if utterly vague, the message’s dismissive and commanding tone was insulting. He was not some lackey at the high premin’s beck and call. Rodian’s gaze returned to the signature.

  Did Sykion think to impress—intimidate—him with a reminder of her noble rank from her homeland of Farien?

  He sighed. He entertained a good deal of respect from Malourné’s royal family. But for generations, the family had always favored the guild.

  “Sir?” Lúcan asked, a hint of bitterness in his tone.

  Rodian didn’t even look up, though he almost crushed the letter into a ball.

  “Find Lieutenant Branwell and meet me at the stables,” he instructed. “Bring Angus and Maolís, as well. I’ll have the horses saddled.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lúcan answered, not even asking where they were going or why.

  As the corporal strode off down the corridor, Rodian studied the young sage dressed in a dark, dark blue robe—a metaologer. He didn’t care for the company of sages—well, most of them—but he wouldn’t send one off alone on foot at night.

  “Come with me,” Rodian ordered. “You can ride with us.”

  The sage stepped away. “I can see myself back, Captain.”

  Typical. Rodian frowned; sages isolated themselves from “common” folk, regardless of the guild’s public works and charitable institutions. As he turned to step out and close his office door, he suddenly felt lost as his gaze lingered on the other letter, across the room on his desk.

  It had come two days ago, and he still hadn’t answered it.

  All the burdens here kept him from doing so. His father would have understood. In part, a father’s pride was why Rodian took his duty as seriously as his faith in the Blessed Trinity of Sentience. But his uncle had sent this letter.

  How could Rodian say—write—that he couldn’t come home now? Not even to pay last respects at the grave of his adoring father.

  Rodian shut his office door.

  Without a glance at the sage, he led the way down the corridor and out into the open courtyard. The sage headed off for the gatehouse tunnel, and Rodian promptly strode for the stables. Upon stepping through the large stable doors, he found Branwell already saddling his huge roan stallion.

  Half a head taller than his captain, with a clean-shaven head as well as jaw, Percier Branwell looked twice as wide and at least six years older. His red tabard had been specially tailored to fit his broad shoulders.

  “I passed Lúcan heading for our barracks,” the lieutenant said. “He told me we were riding out. Where to?”

  Rodian didn’t answer. Promoting Branwell had been the correct choice; he was a competent, experienced veteran of the regulars who could read and write. Had Rodian chosen anyone else to replace Garrogh, discontent would’ve sprouted among his men. But Rodian didn’t care for Branwell, didn’t trust him, and never had.

  Percier Branwell was among those whose resentment was rather open concerning Rodian’s early rise in position, to the point of making speculations on how it had been achieved.

  Turning away, Siweard Rodian headed for his white mare, Snowbird.

  “To Old Procession Road, to the sages’ guild,” he finally answered, still wondering what he was about to ride into.

  Chane slipped silently downstairs, peeked out the barracks door, and found the courtyard empty. Several options ran through his mind.

  As Wynn had suggested, he could make his way through the keep to the new library, as its back met the bailey wall’s rear. Slipping out a window and dropping over the twenty-foot wall was not a challenge for him, and he knew the path well enough. But the chance of being spotted was high if he tried going through the keep this early at night.

  He had no idea what might result if he was spotted. He was only a guest here, but with Wynn under constant suspicion, the council’s mistrust might also spread to him and anything he did. Not to mention, the very fact that she had been banished to her room, with a guard at the door, gave him pause.

  Chane glanced toward the gatehouse tunnel, framed by its two small inner towers. Of three old portcullises along the tunnel’s length, only the outer one was ever used by the sages. Its controls were likely in one of the outer gatehouse towers, but he had no notion of which side. The other side would be unmanned.

  He could go there, climb to the two-story tower’s top, and risk a jump down into the bailey. But if he guessed wrong about which side to enter, he might run into more sages, and his sudden appearance would cause alarm.

  Another worry had nagged Chane since agreeing to flee the guild. Wynn had refused to leave with him because she feared losing her resources here. She did not know that he faced the same unfortunate prospect. There were means here that he needed, as well. Chane considered the risk of one stop before making his escape.

  Across the courtyard lay the northwest building, flush with the keep’s wall. A passage had been built through the wall behind it that connected to a newer building in the bailey. This was where the guest quarters, his quarters, lay. But in the sublevels below that building was something more useful to him. The guild laboratories were in the first and second subfloors there, along with the office or study of Premin Frideswida Hawes of the Order of Metaology.

  Chane stepped quickly across the courtyard and through the northwest building’s central door. But just as he pulled the door closed behind him, voices drifted up from below. Slipping into the first chamber on his left, he rounded its upward stairs to hover at the top of the ones that descended below. The pair of voices floating up the stairway grew slightly clearer.

  Chane recognized only one: that of Premin Hawes.

  “The need is critical now,” she said. “Besides the archives, the passageways here, and the main corridors of the keep, where else have you managed placement?”

  “Placement isn’t the issue,” a frustrated female voice answered. “Can’t you explain to Premin Syk
ion how long it takes to create even one of these?”

  “That isn’t her concern,” Hawes answered. “You will place more eyes as quickly as possible. Requisition anyone and anything you need. I will handle the cost. Do you understand?”

  A long pause followed, and then, “Yes, Premin.”

  “I’ll check in later. Prepare a detailed report on how many are still under construction and those that have been distributed.”

  The voices fell silent. One pair of footsteps upon stone began growing fainter.

  Chane tensed, ready to run should another pair of steps come toward the stairs. When he finally heard the second pair, they were brief, followed by the ringing thud of a closing metal door. He stood there, wondering. . . .

  What was meant about “eyes,” “construction,” and “distribution”? According to Wynn, the sage’s cold-lamp crystals were made here in the lower levels. What were the metaologers making now and to what purpose?

  Time pressed upon him, and he had a more urgent reason for coming here.

  Descending, Chane found the first sublevel’s passage empty but for the six handleless iron doors, three on each side, and a portal at the far end on the right. He stepped quickly and quietly to the last one still ajar and nudged it inward a little farther.

  “Premin?”

  If she was inside, there would be no mistaking his maimed voice and who had come. She would be unable to ignore him, as she might ignore someone knocking. Light footsteps sounded against stone, and the door was pulled open wider.

  For an instant, Chane’s gaze caught on what lay beyond the narrow inner passage that was barely three strides long. All he could see were shelves pegged in the chamber’s left wall in line with the entryway. The rest of the room, which opened up to the right, was hidden. Those pegged shelves were filled with books; plank-bound sheaves; and narrow, upright cylinders of wood, brass, and unglazed ceramic.

  Then he looked down into Premin Hawes’s piercing hazel eyes.

  They had not seen each other since the previous autumn, when Chane had left with Wynn to journey south to the Lhoin’na, this continent’s elven people. With Hawes’s midnight blue cowl pulled back, her cropped ash gray hair bristled across her head. Any lines of her true age were faint in her even, small features. Below her small mouth, her jawline narrowed to the soft point of her chin. She might have caught some men’s attention if not for her stoic demeanor and severe, penetrating gaze.

  “Master Andraso,” she said with no inflection.

  She was the only one who called him that. Then again, Chane rarely spoke to anyone but Wynn. Hawes’s eyes watched him without wavering, and she showed no surprise at his arrival. In the brief times that Chane had interacted with her, nothing ever seemed to catch her unawares.

  “Forgive the intrusion,” he apologized, and then quickly wondered why, as he had never been given to apologizing, even in his mortal life. “But . . . I am leaving for a while . . . tonight. I wished to speak with you first.”

  A flicker of something, though it was not surprise, flashed across Hawes’s face. It vanished with a brief twitch of her left eye.

  “Leaving? Why?”

  This question was unexpected, and Chane had no intention of telling her more.

  “I am taking city lodgings, rather than burden the guild further as a guest.” Before she pressed him, he went on. “I wanted to know if you have continued with one of the . . . the projects we discussed.”

  “The healing concoction?” she returned bluntly.

  Neither subtlety nor manners would help Chane here, and he simply nodded.

  Hawes shook her head slightly. “It would be pointless, as I don’t have the components.” She cocked her head slightly. “You’d best come in.”

  Chane was uncertain how much he should tell—show—the premin of metaology.

  She turned down the short entryway, and he stepped inside and closed the door. When he followed her, in three strides, her study filled his view. He had been here several times, always wishing for a stolen moment to explore it.

  Stout, narrow tables and squat casements were stuffed with more texts, as well as odd little contraptions of metal, crystal, glass, wood, and leather. A rickety old armchair of worn blue fabric was stuffed into the back right corner beyond the messy, dark, and aged desk that contained a dozen or more little drawers. Atop the desk’s corner sat a dimming cold lamp next to an array of brass articulated arms that each held a framed magnifying lens.

  “How much have you gained in this pursuit?” Hawes asked.

  Again Chane wavered, but he would learn nothing if he kept his progress from her. She was the only one capable of helping him, though he had no idea why she did so.

  Unshouldering one of his packs, he pulled out a book with which they were both familiar: The Seven Leaves of Life. It was only two leather-covered flats with one long sheet of old paper between, folded back and forth into seven panels. To this he added two small, cloth-wrapped bundles.

  Hawes looked at the latter as he laid them on her desk and unwrapped the first. Its contents riveted her attention, but for only an instant. The strange gray mushrooms had gray caps that spread in branched protrusions, each branch splayed and flattened at the end in a shape a little like a leaf.

  “Muhkgean,” Hawes said, clearly needing no confirmation from Chane. “These dwarven mushrooms will do no good unless you’ve managed to . . .”

  Her gaze shifted to the other small bundle.

  Chane pulled open its cloth.

  Tiny pearl-colored petals—or leaves, judging by their shape—shimmered like silvery white velvet in the cold lamp’s light, though they were as delicate as silk. The remaining stems and leaves beneath them, though wilted, were a dark green, nearly black even in the light.

  “Anamgiah . . . the Life Shield,” Hawes whispered, and then looked up at him. “Where did you get these?”

  “In the open plain on the way into the Lhoin’na’s forest and their capital. I did not steal them. They grow wild there.”

  Why did he feel the need to defend himself? It was none of her concern where he had gotten them.

  “Can you assist me now?” he asked. “Give me further instructions to make the concoction in the text?”

  This time, he wanted something conclusive, something he could put into practice. His own body was nearly indestructible; Wynn’s was not. He needed anything that might keep her whole and sound, no matter the cost.

  Hawes glanced at the book in his hand, and her brow creased. “I don’t . . . Healing is not one of my fields. Premin Adlam would be more able—”

  “No.”

  Besides Wynn, he trusted no one here with this exploit other than Hawes, and he barely trusted her. He had not even told Wynn of what he was doing.

  “I was not suggesting that you go to him for assistance,” Hawes said, and a bit of annoyance slipped into her tone. “But he knows more of these matters than I.”

  She looked down at the two open bundles for a long moment, and then held out her narrow hand without even looking at him.

  “Leave the book and the components with me,” she instructed. “I will look into testing the process.”

  “No.”

  Hawes’s head barely turned, but her nearer thin eyebrow arched, and her gaze could have struck like a winter cold snap.

  “If you thought to manage this yourself,” she said evenly, “you would not have come to me. I will keep your secret and provide you with the result of my efforts. In exchange, I will take a portion of these components, not more than a fifth, for my own interests.”

  Chane’s throat tightened. He feared—no, more than feared—leaving one of his precious books, as well as these rare ingredients. There was no telling how soon he could reenter this place, but she was correct in one thing: if he did have any notion of how to attempt what was written in this text, he would not be standing here.

  And strangely, Hawes’s attempt to bargain made him less reluctant. She would gain someth
ing from this, as well.

  “Agreed,” he rasped, and laid the book in her hand, which had not lowered or moved since she had extended it.

  “Where will you be staying?” she asked.

  He would not go that far, and shook his head. “I will contact you in a few days.”

  A long pause followed, and then she nodded.

  Chane wanted to thank her but did not know how. So he simply turned and left the study, closing the door behind him. Taking the stairs two at a time, he made his way out and stepped into the courtyard. His thoughts once again turned over which route he should use to get out of the guild. He had taken only six steps into the courtyard before he stopped cold.