Between Their Worlds Page 31

  Before Chap could move, Osha lunged out in front of him.

  “You shoot, you die!” Osha shouted, and then his voice dropped to a menacing whisper. “Even if I die . . . you die!”

  Chap did not know why Én’nish had spoken in her own language. Perhaps the young woman had intended only Osha to understand and be rattled. It had not worked. Osha stood poised and steady, just the same, with an arrow fully drawn back, its black feathers almost to his dark tan cheek.

  “We leave—now!” the other anmaglâhk barked in Elvish, but Én’nish hesitated and then took a step back.

  Magiere started to lunge, and Chap went at her with a vicious snarl and snap. This had to end now. Neither side would win, even if half of them ended up dead.

  Magiere wheeled on him, and as he looked into her fully black eyes, Én’nish’s words still stuck in his head.

  Think of your misbegotten mate and the love he took from me! I will suffer that for a lifetime . . . but I will see you suffer the same an instant before you die.

  He kept rumbling as he closed on Magiere.

  Én’nish’s threat was real, though it mattered little. There was never a doubt that these assassins wanted Leesil dead almost as much as Magiere. One of them had a personal vendetta, and that was both doubly dangerous and potentially useful for the future.

  Magiere stared at him, half panting from exertion or fury, but she did not move.

  “Chap?” she whispered.

  He almost collapsed in relief when she recognized him, but he quickly reached for her memories. Of all those he had glimpsed before in her, he had to find and raise those of Leesil amid her awareness filled with older, hate-laced recollections of Én’nish and other anmaglâhk. He flooded her with memories that might soothe her. But he was also aware of Osha, just to his left, stepping into sight.

  Én’nish and her accomplice were gone.

  “All right?” Osha whispered.

  Focused only on Magiere, Chap was uncertain to whom the young elf spoke. When Osha tried to step around toward Magiere, Chap sidestepped and cut him off.

  Magiere stumbled back against the street’s far wall. Perhaps she was now aware enough to stay back.

  Chap kept his focus on her memories. Her head sagged until her face was curtained by black hair, but her fingers twitched, clutching at the wall stones like claws.

  Magiere sank into those memories of hearth and home. There was the moment of her wedding, of holding Leesil’s arm as they walked down the aisle, with Osha and Wynn walking together behind them. The whole place was filled with their neighbors and friends in Miiska.

  She didn’t fight these memories and let Chap wash away everything else in her thoughts. But Wynn still waited, here and now, and Leesil was out there trying to get to her.

  “Enough,” she whispered, though it slurred between her teeth. “That’s enough, Chap.”

  When she raised her head, the whole world was dark and dim again before her eyes. There was only Chap watching her, and Osha behind him, with his bow at his side and an arrow still notched to its string.

  Magiere remembered so little of what had happened only moments before.

  “We go now?” Osha asked insistently, though a slight frown wrinkled his high brow. “Go where Brot’ân’duivé say. . . . Follow plan.”

  Chap huffed once.

  Magiere stared at Chap as Osha’s words sank in. They were simply supposed to act as a decoy, draw off any lurking anmaglâhk watching the guild castle, and seed a little chaos among them.

  They’d done their part. She took a deep breath and heaved herself off the wall.

  With a last worried glance at her, Osha turned away. Chap lingered until Magiere actually followed and then fell in beside her. As they neared the alley’s mouth, Magiere looked at the wagon, trying to peer beneath, but no one was there.

  “Leanâlhâm?” she called.

  Something moved at a near corner of the alley’s mouth. Leanâlhâm stood looking out, wide-eyed, from the shadows.

  Magiere faltered in the middle of the alley’s mouth. The girl was supposed to have stayed hidden until they came for her. Had she been there all along and seen everything?

  Osha passed Leanâlhâm and stopped short of the narrow space between the wagon and the alley wall. Leanâlhâm still looked at Magiere without blinking, stuck where she was at the alley’s corner.

  “Are you . . . all right?” the girl whispered.

  “It’s time to go,” Magiere said, and reached out.

  Leanâlhâm flinched and pulled back, and then so did Magiere.

  Osha carefully put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, turning her to follow him, but Leanâlhâm glanced back over her shoulder. It was too hard for Magiere to see her face in the dark of the alley.

  No doubt the girl kept looking back at her as Osha led her away. Magiere stood there, unable to follow.

  Once, as an invader in Leanâlhâm’s homeland, Magiere had been asked, or rather intimidated into, something by Sgäile. Looking back now, it seemed like some forewarning of what had come later: Sgäile’s own death. She’d agreed to watch over Leanâlhâm if she could. And she would protect that girl of mixed blood, now caught between worlds like the rest of them.

  But how could Magiere protect Leanâlhâm from herself?

  Chap huffed and nudged her leg, and Magiere finally followed him down the alley, where they left the wagon behind. It was no longer needed.

  As Leesil crept through the strange library with Brot’an, he never wanted to see another library ever again. Most especially not one made by the sages.

  Every time they cleared another row of shelves, casements, or little cleared spaces with tables and stools, he spotted a light ahead on the ceiling rafters. And every time he had to slow and peek about, only to find no one was there.

  The absurdity of his task struck him anew. Yes, this had all been his idea, but that wasn’t the point. Of all the things he’d expected to do in Calm Seatt, breaking Wynn out of her own guild wasn’t one of them.

  And who in seven hells left this many lights on all night?

  He and Brot’an had even stopped to puzzle over one. Leesil was familiar with Wynn’s crystal, but hers was powered by body heat, friction. What kept these others glowing in their wall mounts? He glanced about nervously. Did someone come at regular intervals to warm the crystals? If so, he needed to move faster.

  “There,” Brot’an whispered, pointing.

  Leesil spotted the next staircase leading down. He quickly headed for it, and they descended—finally—to the last floor of this bookworm’s labyrinth.

  They neither saw nor heard anyone. Their only company was an overwhelming number of books, parchments, sheaves, tables, and chairs—and wall-mounted cold lamps spaced far enough apart to leave spaces of shadow among the casements.

  Leesil glanced back at Brot’an, and the old butcher almost appeared to scowl. When they reached the inner wall of the first floor, Leesil hurried southeast, looking for a door. They found one—right below yet another cold lamp.

  “Easy enough,” Leesil whispered.

  Brot’an didn’t respond, and Leesil carefully gripped the door handle. He twisted slowly, and it didn’t budge. He pressed harder, and then again with more of his weight . . . to no effect.

  There was a reason why they’d found no sages about. The place was locked.

  Dropping to his knees, he took a closer look. The door was heavy, but the light from the lamp above exposed a simple lock plate. The only problem would be light spilling out the door once it was opened and thereby drawing attention.

  He glanced up, about to tell Brot’an to remove the crystal once the door had been unlocked, and then noticed a glint above the lamp. Something was higher up, near the ceiling, and it didn’t look exactly like another crystal.

  It was set in a pewter oval like a bulky pendant, though he couldn’t make out how it clung to the wall. It wasn’t cut in facets; this “crystal” was almost round or domed, with perha
ps half of it sunk into the pewter. He couldn’t be certain, but it appeared the pewter frame was etched with a pattern or maybe tiny markings.

  Leesil turned back to the task at hand.

  “Take the lamp’s crystal out,” he told Brot’an. “Once I have the door unlocked, tuck it away so it doesn’t betray us. We might need it later.”

  He had no reluctance at stealing from the guild, not after they’d locked up Wynn.

  Brot’an shook his head. “Let me unlock the door.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  Reaching behind, Leesil pulled out his shirt’s tail and removed a long, slender box from inside the back of his shirt. He set it on the stone floor before opening it.

  There was empty space within that had once held his own lost bone knife and two white metal stilettos. He folded back a panel on the lid’s inside and revealed an array of slim tools of dark metal. Most were about the size of a noblewoman’s hatpin. Choosing two, he studied the lock as Brot’an crouched, glowing crystal already in hand.

  “Where did you get that box?” Brot’an asked.

  Leesil had no intention of sharing his youth with Brot’an or explaining that the box had been a gift from his mother the day he turned seventeen. That was a birthday he would much rather forget. Without answering, Leesil went to work on the lock.

  Chane fought to stifle panic when he realized he could not move.

  The hand that had clutched his shirt and cloak and pulled him into the wall let go as soon as he felt air again on his face. But more than half of his body remained trapped in stone.

  He could not turn his head; the back of his skull was held fast. With only his eyes, he looked wildly about, but the room was too dark even for him to see much.

  It appeared to be a gathering place, a small room of arranged benches facing toward the small chamber’s left side. In the right far corner was a closed door, and from what he remembered, it must lead out into the main passage along the keep’s front. But that was all he could see without being able to turn his head.

  Except for a figure standing ahead of him in the dark little seminar room, and it certainly was not Ore-Locks.

  Its robe was so dark it appeared almost black, though Chane knew it was midnight blue. The garment covered a slight form that reached up with one narrow hand to pull back a matching cowl. The other hand came out of a pocket, bearing the harsh light of a cold-lamp crystal.

  Premin Frideswida Hawes appeared before Chane.

  Every time he grew warier of her skills, she became even more dangerous than he had imagined. She watched him silently from well beyond arm’s length, her bristling gray hair and hazel eyes glittering in the crystal’s light. It did not take Chane long to realize what had happened.

  She had not gone south down the main passage. Instead, she had slipped into this room and waited for him to draw near in heading toward the entrance. Somehow she had sensed him enough to seize and pull him through—no, into—the wall. The only things he could move now were his face, his eyes, and most of his left hand.

  Chane could not remember ever being this helpless.

  Panic and then rage began to awaken the sleeping beast within him—and it rose in a frenzy, wanting to break free. As his senses sharpened further, he knew his eyes would lose all color; his teeth would begin to shift, exposing fangs; and in the beast’s panic, he could not stop himself from trying to pull free.

  All of his hunger feeding him strength did no good.

  Still, Hawes studied him like some creature easily captured for her chill curiosity. Though her jaw was clenched tight, her expression remained otherwise unreadable.

  Chane fought to stop the change but could not, and surely she saw all of it. He was helpless against himself and helpless against her. And he hated both conditions, but he remained silent.

  Shouting would only make things worse, endangering Wynn and Ore-Locks, should they hear him and come running. Even if he were about to be finished off, here and now, he would do nothing to betray Wynn.

  Hawes raised one hand, and her fingers twitched once, as if making a quick gesture.

  “What are you?” she demanded.

  Perhaps it was the sound of her voice in this silent room that caught Chane off guard. Was this a chance to distract her, to keep her here for a while? In that at least, he might keep one obstacle out of Wynn’s way. He bit down, trying to force the beast within back into its cell.

  With a sense of hysteria, he wondered if telling her the truth would stun—rivet—her all the more.

  To his shame, he was afraid. If he gave an answer she did not care for, she might easily shove him back inside the wall, not knowing how to finish him. She could leave him there, forever unseen, forever undead in a tomb no one would find, let alone try to open.

  “I told you once,” he rasped, trying to keep calm. “I am the one who keeps Wynn safe.”

  “That is what you choose to be . . . not what you are.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Hawes went silent for a while. “Did Wynn truly find Bäalâle Seatt?”

  The sudden shock of her question numbed the last of Chane’s cunning. How had the premin even known what he and Wynn were up to the last time they had left this place? He had never been a skilled judge of people—only because he didn’t care about anyone besides himself and Wynn, for the most part. Something in Hawes’s tone and her stillness—and now that question—left him wondering.

  Had he had misinterpreted what was happening here? Did Hawes genuinely want answers and see this as the only way to get them?

  “Yes,” Chane answered.

  He saw her reaction, though it was only the barest, briefest widening of her hazel eyes. Hawes wanted the truth for the sake of it, so unlike her counterparts on the Premin Council. If he was going save Wynn—if not himself—his only chance was to answer her.

  “What were you seeking there?” Hawes asked.

  “A device . . . an orb of stone . . . used by the Ancient Enemy. Wynn believes there are more, and she is determined to find them before minions of the Enemy do so first.” At this, Chane couldn’t stop, but bitterness leaked into his maimed voice. “She has done so on her own, as no one here sees fit to help her!”

  Hawes blinked, but her eyes remained fixed on him. The motion was too much like that of an owl at rest, eyeing a mouse. But it had been a reaction, perhaps a startling one for this premin.

  “Not entirely true,” she replied. “What purpose do these . . . orbs . . . serve?”

  Hawes, like all on the council, must have read Wynn’s journal accounts of what had happened in the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks. She knew at least of the first orb’s discovery. Did she also know of the one Chane had found in Bäalâle Seatt, the one Wynn had handed over to Ore-Locks?

  “I do not know,” he answered. “The few who might are desperate to claim them, so I assume they have great power.”

  “The few?” she repeated sharply.

  Almost instantly, without the sound of a step, she closed on him . . . close enough that he could have grabbed her if only he could have gotten free of the wall.

  “The one called Most Aged Father among the elves of the Farlands,” Chane answered. “Minions of the Enemy . . . perhaps some of the elves of this continent . . . and Domin il’Sänke.”

  Hawes’s eyes narrowed as she hissed, “Ghassan il’Sänke?”

  The reaction confirmed one thing: Chane had warned Wynn more than once against trusting that Suman sage. That Hawes was shaken, even openly angered, by the foreign domin’s awareness of the orbs did not mean she was any more trustworthy.

  What did Hawes want with the orbs?

  Chane tried to turn away from the subject.

  “Wynn has been forced to fight this out on her own!” he accused, suddenly unable to contain his anger. “Except for Shade and myself! Your council has been the most consistent obstacle in the way of the only one who has tried to do anything worthwhile in this.”

  Hawes blinke
d slowly again, watching him. She did not offer any defense of her council.

  Chane suspected the premin had already known half the answers to her questions. Was she simply testing him?

  “Why did you break in here?” she asked. “To steal her away?”

  Chane hesitated, uncertain. Would the truth cause Hawes to rouse the guards to check on Wynn? Hawes looked almost tense as she waited for his answer.

  “Yes.”

  Premin Hawes once again became the cold, calculating observer as she stared at him.