Between Their Worlds Read online

  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 conscription 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?

  Pawl opened his eyes in the back room of his scriptorium. If he still existed, so must she. He had seen names in those scant sheets for transcription from the guild. Was she one of them? Could that be possible?

  He ran his hands down his face. No matter the hatred and need that clung to those few, unbroken pebbles of memories, his responsibilities here came first. He had his existence, in his city, to attend.

  The world he’d created here for himself was his best protection. He never lost sight of this, and he glanced at the unlocked back door, its stout iron bar leaning beside it. What was keeping Liam and Imaret?

  Despite the guild having both slowed and altered the project, they still provided his shop with a good deal of other work. A journeyor in the order of Sentiology had recently returned from his first year’s assignment. Premin Renäld had engaged Pawl’s scriptorium to transcribe the young man’s journals for the guild’s archive. The deadline was today.

  Upon arriving at the shop this evening, Pawl had found that his scribes weren’t finished. He sent Imaret and Liam to assure the premin of completion by tomorrow at closing. As a matter of principle, he kept all patrons fully informed. A one-day extension should cause no concern.

  Hopefully it wasn’t Imaret who kept him waiting.

  The first two sages murdered last autumn had been friends of hers—one of them in particular. The pair had another close companion at the guild, Nikolas Columsarn, who’d later been attacked. Naturally, shared loss had brought Imaret and Nikolas together, and the young sage had begun spending much of his free time at the shop. Imaret used any excuse possible to go visit him.

  For all his quiet, nervous nature, Nikolas possessed a sharp, curious mind. More central to Pawl’s curiosity was the boy’s interest in history. Something about Nikolas Columsarn pulled at Pawl. It wasn’t pity, but rather a driven need to . . . protect what was his.

  Pawl grew more anxious and wary after each of Nikolas’s visits, lingering longer each night as they pored over papers and books brought from Pawl’s own home library. Attachments of any kind were a danger, and he already had enough of those in managing the shop and its staff, and especially Imaret.

  And she still kept him waiting.

  He stepped to the back door, reaching for his broad-brimmed hat and black cloak on a peg beside it, preparing to step out and look for the girl. But the back door flew open, and he stopped it with one hand before it struck him.

  Imaret nearly fell inside, breathing hard, and cried, “Master?”

  She looked about wildly, and Liam followed her in, appearing equally unsettled. Pawl startled
both of them as he stepped from behind the door and closed it.

  “What is it?” he asked immediately.

  Small for her age, Imaret had her mother’s dusky skin and mass of slightly kinky black hair. Liam stood a full head taller than her, and had reddish hair and pale blue eyes. Pawl guessed them to both to be about sixteen years old, although he’d never asked.

  “The guild is locked down.” Imaret panted. “It’s under guard. City guard!”

  Pawl froze for three of Imaret’s fast breaths. “Slow down . . . and explain.”

  “We didn’t even get to the courtyard,” she rushed on. “The portcullis was down, and the Shyldfälches are walking the walls, and Nikolas is trapped inside!”

  Her words left Pawl anxious, though likely not for the same reasons as her. She wasn’t making sense, and he turned his hard gaze on Liam.

  “We weren’t able to deliver our message properly,” Liam added. “We refused to leave, insisting we would stand there until a guard sent word that we were waiting . . . and we kept on waiting. We thought they’d let us in, but it wasn’t Premin Renäld who finally came out. It was Domin High-Tower. He didn’t care about the journeyor’s work we should’ve completed, and he said all work on the translation project has been suspended. You’re not to send any scribes until further notice . . . from him. And then he just walked off!”

  Imaret was still panting, and her face was distraught. Pawl had no time to reassure her, for Nikolas was the least of his concerns. Something drastic had happened if Sykion had halted all work on the translation project. But what would cause her to call in the city guard?

  Pawl was now completely cut off . . . indefinitely.

  “Did High-Tower or the guards give any reason for why this has happened?” he asked.

  Both apprentices shook their heads.

  “Nikolas hates being locked in,” Imaret said. “He hated it when he was . . . when it happened last autumn.”

  Nikolas had been assaulted, like several other young sages. Unlike them, he had survived, just barely. He had spent more than a moon in convalescence, and even now was not fully recovered—perhaps never would be.

  Pawl could not squelch a flash of pity. Imaret was afraid for the only friend she had left, and he could not let this impede her valued skills. She was more than just a gifted scribe in training. Even at her young age, he had come to depend on her for artistic assignments.

  She could reproduce anything she read from memory, character for character, whether she could read it or not.

  “Liam, take Imaret directly home,” Pawl instructed. “No deviations. And then do so yourself.”

  He looked down at Imaret and placed his wide-brimmed hat on his head. He slung his cloak over his shoulders and began to tie it. She hadn’t argued, but she looked up at him, as if barely restraining an urgent plea.

  “I will go to the guild myself tonight,” he told her. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I learn.”

  Her dusky little face flushed with relief, and then: “Couldn’t we wait here, until you—”

  “Home now,” he said sharply, and then calmed, looking for a rational way to dissuade her. “I already risk censure from your parents for keeping you this late. Both of your families will soon begin worrying.”

  Imaret blinked at him, and Pawl had a strange feeling she might argue—not with his reasoning or his instructions, but with something else he had said. She glanced back at Liam and turned away in resignation.

  “You’ll ask after Nikolas?” she said, reaching for the door’s handle.

  “I will try,” he answered, not willing to make a promise.

  Once Pawl had seen off both apprentices, he headed in the other direction—toward the guild’s castle. He moved quickly through the dark streets, wondering if perhaps Imaret and Liam had overstated the situation. Emotion and personal concerns often narrowed the perspectives of the young. Soon he found himself heading up Old Procession Road, and the inner bailey gate lay just ahead. But as he opened the gate, he saw that Imaret’s emotional outburst had been no frightened exaggeration.

  The portcullis was closed, and a Shyldfälche in a red tabard peered out at him through the thick, upright beams. Pawl spotted another one heading off along the bailey wall’s southern half.

  He approached the portcullis, greeting the guard inside with only a nod. The man was very large, with a shaved head and an overly affected grimace.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the guard asked, though his tone hardly suggested interest in doing so.

  “I am Master a’Seatt from the Upright Quill,” Pawl said, intentionally pitching his tone to slightly haughty and annoyed. “My scriptorium is engaged in several projects for the sages, yet two of my apprentices were sent away earlier tonight. Please tell Domin High-Tower I wish to speak with him . . . now.”

  The guard’s expression didn’t change, and he merely answered, “Domin High-Tower has given instructions that he’s not to be disturbed. Come back tomorrow.”

  All the bald guard did was stand there, arms crossed, staring out through the portcullis beams.

  Pawl stared back in a silent moment of indecision. The guild grounds indeed had been locked down. The work for his shop was the most immediate practical concern, but he had also lost the means to fulfill his own desire. Pressing the matter here and now might only prolong such loss or even make it permanent.

  He finally turned back out the bailey gate and up Old Procession Road. But he kept remembering the names he had read in those mixed fragments sent for transcription at his shop.

  Vespana, Ga’hetman, Jeyretan . . . Fäzabid and Memaneh . . . Uhmgadâ, Creif, and Sau’ilahk . . . Volyno and Häs’saun . . . and Li’kän.

  Was she among them?

  Patience was a benefit of a long existence, but like anything else, it could be worn thinner than the finest paper.

  * * *

  Magiere allowed Leanâlhâm to help hold her up as they waited in a cutway between two buildings. Chap and Leesil were flattened up against the wall nearer the street, keeping watch. Leesil had managed to retrieve their travel chest, and it rested on the ground beside him along with their packs.

  The building at Magiere’s back was some form of tall, three-story inn. Osha had gone around to the front to enter, make his way to the back, and let them all inside, out of sight. But in waiting, Magiere looked down and cupped Leanâlhâm’s face with one hand.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  As the question escaped her lips, Leanâlhâm’s eyes widened. She quickly put her hand over Magiere’s mouth and shook her head for silence.

  When Magiere had last left Leanâlhâm, the girl had been safe at home in the elven forest of the eastern continent, living with the elderly healer Gleann, Leanâlhâm’s so-called “grandfather.” Leesil’s mother, Nein’a, had gone to stay with them as well. Magiere could only imagine the girl’s grief, as well as Gleann’s, upon hearing of the death of her “uncle,” Sgäile. Although Sgäile had been related to the girl and the old healer by blood, Magiere had never quite understood elven familial connections. Titles like “grandfather” and “uncle” were likely a bit too simple.

  What could have possessed Brot’an to take Leanâlhâm away from such a peaceful life? Magiere jerked her head away from Leanâlhâm’s hand. “Why aren’t you at home with your grandfather?”

  Leanâlhâm didn’t answer and looked away toward the cutway’s back end, but Osha hadn’t appeared yet.

  Magiere could no longer see Leanâlhâm’s face inside the girl’s hood. She began to suspect something more than fear of being overheard by their enemies caused the girl’s silence.

  “Leanâlhâm?” she whispered, more gently.

  The girl instantly cringed, almost as if the word were a blow, and then suddenly she straightened and pulled on Magiere’s arm.

  Osha was leaning around the inn’s back corner, waving all of them to follow him.

  Magiere looked back the other way. “Psst!”
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br />   Leesil glanced back, as did Chap, and she waved them into retreat. They followed as Magiere hobbled down the cutway toward Osha, with Leanâlhâm’s help. Around back, Osha opened a back door that had been left cracked and ushered them inside to the nearby stairs.

  The effort and agony of making the climb did little to distract Magiere, for Leanâlhâm was still too quiet.

  Leesil wasn’t surprised to find that Brot’an had chosen a room on the top floor. Anmaglâhk had a penchant for coming and going via rooftops. But in the moment, he didn’t much care. Once he’d put down their belongings, he took hold of Magiere’s arm, quickly unbelted her falchion, and then helped Leanâlhâm get her settled on the room’s one narrow bed. After the madness of this night, he and Chap had finally gotten Magiere locked away in at least the illusion of safety.