Between Their Worlds

by Barb; J. C. Hendee

  Once again, he found himself thinking too much like the old butcher—and he hated that. But if it got Magiere out of here alive, he could live with it.

  CHAPTER 21

  The following night, Wynn sat on the floor, tearing roasted mutton into small bits for Shade. Chane refused to let anyone leave the room, since only he had been seen around the inn. He brought back prepared food for the rest of them. Strangely, Ore-Locks ate little. Well, little for a dwarf.

  Wynn had slept much of the day in the bed with Shade, as they were both exhausted. Ore-Locks had merely laid out a cloak in the corner of the room on which to rest. Fortunately, he didn’t snore much. Once, when Wynn had stirred, perhaps in the midafternoon, she’d glanced over the bed’s edge at Chane lying dormant directly in front of the room’s door.

  She couldn’t help feeling there was something odd about him. He didn’t appear quite so . . . dead, as he lay there. She’d then noticed his hand shift slightly where it rested on the hilt of his dwarven longsword still sheathed and laid out beside him. She’d never before seen Chane move in dormancy, not even slightly.

  She was already awake again before sunset, as was Shade, who also glanced at Chane more than once. The moment it became almost fully dark at dusk, Chane sat up, rose, and went to wake Ore-Locks.

  Shade wasn’t even startled. However, Wynn was.

  She’d looked at Shade resting with her head on her paws. Although Wynn had nothing to base her suspicions upon, she couldn’t help wondering if Shade knew something about Chane that she didn’t—a silly thought. Of course, she didn’t ask either of them about this. What could she ask?

  Then Chane had stepped out to see to the food, and the evening had moved on.

  Shade wolfed down a whole pile of mutton bits in one bite.

  “Don’t eat so fast,” Wynn scolded.

  She didn’t care for mutton, but there were roasted potatoes, goat cheese, and dark forest bread to choose from. Chane stood at the window, looking down into the street, as Ore-Locks sighed and fidgeted in the corner.

  “Do you think she’ll come?” Wynn asked.

  “She will come,” Chane answered. “If the message reaches her.”

  It was still difficult for Wynn to believe that Premin Hawes was willing to help. Though she kept such doubts to herself, a tiny part of her worried this might just be a way to track her down. But Chane seemed convinced, and he had a penchant—an actual gift—for knowing when someone lied, if he could focus on such detection.

  Chane lifted the canvas curtain’s edge with a fingertip, and a streetlamp outside lit his pale features. Wynn studied his clean, long profile.

  She’d always liked it, from the first night they’d met back in Bela at the shabby guild annex she was trying to help establish. Standing there in the dim light, he looked like the young nobleman she’d first taken him for, before she knew . . . what he really was. But he wasn’t the only one who now filled her thoughts.

  Wynn was still stunned by the ache that stabbed her inside when she’d seen Osha. All else had flushed from her mind. She thought only of his companionship in the long journey into the Pock Peaks in search of the orb. More had happened after that.

  Days after Magiere and Leesil’s wedding, when they’d all reached Bela, the capital of Belaski, Osha had to leave early from the inn. One of the an’Cróan’s living ships, a Päirvänean, lay in wait up the coast to take him home. She’d followed him to Bela’s bustling docks, not yet ready to lose him—though another part of her reason was to give him a journal she’d written of certain events to pass on to Brot’an.

  All along the journey out of the Pock Peaks, Magiere had warned Wynn about any intimacy with an an’Cróan. It was a warning that had once been given too late to Magiere concerning Leesil, who was a half-blood.

  An’Cróan bonded for life, and some were unable to survive the loss of a mate.

  Even when Osha said good-bye, turning up the busy waterfront through the crowd to head north out of the city, the way he’d looked at Wynn made her ache. He didn’t want to leave her, and she hadn’t been ready to let him go. Any warning was forgotten as she ran after him.

  Wynn had shouted for him, though he hadn’t heard her until she’d almost caught up. When he did stop and turn, she threw herself at him, grabbing for his shoulders to pull herself up.

  “Do not forget me,” she’d whispered as his arms closed around her.

  Wynn lifted her head, clumsily thrusting her mouth against Osha’s. Then she’d turned and run, fearing to even look back. Until last night, that day on the docks had been the last time she’d seen him.

  Chane was not the only one who had followed her across the world, and Chane was not the only one who had stood as her guardian.

  Chane turned from the window, gazing down at her.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For coming back to us. For not staying with them.”

  Wynn felt like she might burn to cinders inside and come apart.

  “Chane, what did you think I was going to—”

  Shade growled, and Wynn jerked around. The dog kept growling at the wall just to the left of the bed.

  A dark-sleeved arm emerged out of the wall’s old planks.

  “Wynn!” Chane rasped.

  Ore-Locks rushed around the bed as a shoulder and the skirt of a robe followed the arm. Chane was right above Wynn, but he didn’t step around her or try to pull her back.

  Amid Wynn’s fright, she noticed that neither of them appeared alarmed—only intense. Then the full outline of the dark robe was inside the dim room, and it wasn’t black.

  The light of her cold-lamp crystal on the bedside table clearly showed a deep, midnight blue. One narrow hand reached up to pull back the cowl.

  Premin Hawes looked down at Wynn with two sparkling hazel eyes in a face almost elfin in its narrowness of chin. She stood there, looking about at the others. A canvas pack hung over one of her shoulders, a wrapped parcel under that same arm, and in her other hand . . .

  At the sight of the sun-crystal staff, Wynn almost stopped breathing.

  “Would it not have been easier to use the door?” Chane asked dryly.

  “Footsteps upon the stairs or a knock might be heard,” Hawes answered. “I have no wish to be noticed here.”

  She set the parcel and pack on the bed and held out the staff.

  Wynn was still sitting on the floor, wondering what had just happened.

  “I thought you might like these possessions returned,” the premin said.

  Wynn recovered enough to scramble up and grab the staff. She still couldn’t catch her breath for a thank-you, though she’d have done anything to express her gratitude.

  “The book you asked me to bring is in the pack,” Hawes said, “though I read passable Sumanese.”

  Wynn wouldn’t let go of the staff and fumbled to open her pack with one hand. And then she stopped, taking stock of the contents.

  Aside from an old lexicon or dictionary of Sumanese, there was her journal—the one she’d encrypted with notes from all of the others she’d burned. However, in the message she’d sent to Hawes, she’d risked giving detailed instructions regarding both her location and needs for a reference on the oldest Sumanese dialects. Given Hawes’s choice of guild order, it did not surprise Wynn that the premin knew some Sumanese. Languages were part of all sages’ schooling, though primarily that of cathologers. But many of the recovered secrets of metaology had come out of the Suman Empire.

  “Nikolas had no trouble getting the message to you?” Wynn asked.

  Hawes raised one eyebrow. “Master a’Seatt delivered it.”

  “A’Seatt?” Chane hissed.

  Wynn was taken aback, as well, and as if reading her reaction, Premin Hawes let out a slow breath.

  “It might clarify much to tell each other everything,” the premin said, “if we are to be of assistance to one another.”

  Wynn had already concluded that, but
there was something else in the premin’s response. Hawes hadn’t just offered assistance; she expected something in return. What Wynn needed was beyond price, and she’d learned not to trust gifts. Perhaps it would be best to make the premin go first.

  “Agreed,” Wynn said, and rushed on. “Why are those wagons coming into the guild every night? What are they bringing?”

  Hawes was quiet, though Wynn couldn’t tell if this was caused by indecision, reluctance, or something else. The premin’s expression, or lack of it, offered nothing.

  “Supplies for an expedition,” Hawes suddenly answered.

  “Expedition? To where?”

  “To the castle where you found the ancient texts. According to your report, you retrieved only a small fraction of what is there.”

  Before Wynn uttered a word, Chane beat her to it.

  “They must not!” he rasped. “Did they not read of what is trapped beneath that castle? Premin, you have to—”

  “Making a plan is still far from executing it,” Hawes cut in.

  “Then why do they already amass supplies?” Chane countered.

  Hawes remained fixed on Wynn as she answered. “Assembling a group with even a slim chance to reach that place—should your accounting of the route be detailed enough—will take time. Even should they have a chance to succeed, the effort and what might be gained may prove pointless . . . or unnecessary, in comparison to immediate concerns.”

  Wynn didn’t like the way Hawes studied her.

  “I have answered your question,” the premin said. “Do you have something to share with me?”

  Wynn looked at Chane. He nodded and pulled the old scroll case from inside his shirt.

  She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper as they both settled upon the floor. Chane pulled the lid off the case and unrolled the ancient leather scroll with its blacked-out surface.

  An alliance with Hawes would be all or nothing, and they’d just chosen all. The premin crouched, frowning in puzzlement at both paper and scroll.

  “This is what we’ve translated so far,” Wynn explained, spinning the wrinkled paper around so that the premin could read it.

  The Children in twenty and six steps seek to hide in five corners

  The anchors amid Existence, which had once lived amid the Void.

  One to wither the Tree from its roots to its leaves

  Laid down where a cursed sun cracks the soil.

  That which snuffs a Flame into cold and dark

  Sits alone upon the water that never flows.

  The middling one, taking the Wind like a last breath,

  Sank to sulk in the shallows that still can drown.

  And swallowing Wave in perpetual thirst, the fourth

  Took seclusion in exalted and weeping stone.

  But the last, that consumes its own, wandered astray

  In the depths of the Mountain beneath the seat of a lord’s song.

  Wynn went on. “The Children were the first physical manifestation of the Noble Dead—vampires—somehow created by the Ancient Enemy . . . thirteen of them. The ‘anchors’ are the orbs, and you can see from the poem that there are five—one associated to each of the classical elements. At the war’s end, the Children split into five groups and scattered to hide the orbs.”

  “You said you translated this?”

  “Some of it, but Domin il’Sänke corrected much of it for me.”

  “Il’Sänke?” Hawes repeated with a subtle bite in her voice.

  “The poem itself is in an ancient Sumanese dialect . . . Pärpa’äsea, I think he said.”

  The premin peered between the paper and scroll. “What poem? What does this blotted-out scroll have to do with any of this?”

  Wynn realized how much more she’d have to reveal about herself if they were to continue.

  “The poem itself is written in the fluids of one of the Children . . . beneath a black coating of ink.”

  Hawes raised only her eyes, and Wynn felt like she’d just alerted some sharp-eyed predator to her presence.

  “How did you read what was written therein?” Hawes asked quietly.

  Wynn glanced at Chane.

  “The short version,” he said.

  Wynn ignored whatever criticism he implied.

  “I made a mistake a few years ago,” she began. She described how she’d ended up with mantic sight, able to see traces of the Elements—or at least Spirit—in all things.

  “You dabbled with a thaumaturgical ritual?” Hawes asked. “What irresponsible fool taught you that? And yes, I know the particular one you used.”

  Wynn didn’t want to go farther down that path. “The taint of it remained stuck in me, and now I can call up mantic sight at will.”

  “But not end it,” Chane interjected.

  “Trouble,” Ore-Locks muttered. “Nothing but trouble.”

  Wynn ignored them both. “I am able to see—”

  “The lack of Spirit within the characters beneath the coating,” Hawes finished. “Because the words were written in the fluids of an undead . . . fluids taken from a body that no longer had the potency of true life . . . and something even beyond a lack of Spirit.”

  Wynn fell silent. Domin il’Sänke wasn’t the only one who’d underestimated the premin. It hadn’t struck Wynn before how much Frideswida Hawes truly knew, but it made sense. No one of lesser ability could’ve become a master, and then a domin, let alone a premin of metaology.

  “Yes,” Wynn confirmed. “But I can’t maintain the sight for long, or it overwhelms and sickens me.”

  “You are fortunate it hasn’t been the death of you . . . in mind, if not body,” Hawes uttered. “Had I known, I would have removed—”

  “No!” Wynn cut in. “It’s all I have to get at what we need.”

  “And how did you learn to call it up at will?” Hawes demanded.

  Wynn hesitated.

  “Il’Sänke!” Hawes whispered. “That deceitful . . . What else did he teach you?”

  Wynn had never seen the premin so unguarded in her emotions. “He tutored me on how to control the sight—that and how to ignite the staff.”

  Hawes appeared to calm, though her demand left Wynn puzzled and worried. She wondered what else the premin thought Ghassan il’Sänke had taught her. She had long suspected there was no affection between the premin and the Suman domin, and il’Sänke’s underestimation of Hawes’s thaumaturgical abilities seemed to be at the core of it.

  Had she been wrong? Was there something greater than that between those two? However, none of it mattered now.

  “We’ve recovered three of the orbs,” Wynn explained. “There are—”

  “Three?” Hawes repeated.

  Wynn closed her mouth. Explaining all this was taking more time than she’d imagined.

  “Yes. You know of the first found in the castle through my journals of the Farlands. There are still two left to locate. If I call up my sight and copy more of the poem, can you help decipher it?”

  Hawes looked down at the translated poem and the first stanza.

  “That was the ‘anchor’ of Water, in ‘exalted and weeping stone,’” she whispered, as if speaking to herself. “And you found the next in Bäalâle Seatt, the one of Earth, which ‘consumes its own.’”

  Wynn grew frightened. No one but those who’d gone with her to Bäalâle should know that. She looked quickly at Ore-Locks and found the dwarf carefully watching the premin.

  “Where was the third found?” Hawes asked.

  “In the Wastes, up north . . . perhaps in the ice, though I haven’t learned much more about it.”

  “In other words, someone else—not in this room—found it. Perhaps even one of your trio of evening visitors that were ejected.”

  This was getting to be too much, and still Wynn could do nothing but wait.

  Hawes studied the poem again. “‘That which snuffs Flame’ is obviously for Fire, and ‘water that never flows’ is obviously
the ice of the Wastes . . . hence your third orb. What remains are Air and Spirit.”

  Wynn only nodded. Though she’d already guessed which three orbs they’d acquired, having these conclusions confirmed—and knowing for certain which two were left—provided some needed certainty. But to have Hawes say so, reading it here and now, as if the conclusions were so obvious . . .