Between Their Worlds Page 32

  Fear washed through Chane that he had said too much.

  CHAPTER 17

  Wynn crept along the barracks behind Ore-Locks until they reached the courtyard’s eastern corner. Ore-Locks pushed her back as he inched out along the main building’s wall. He peered toward the gatehouse tunnel and finally straightened to wave her forward. There was no one else in sight, and Wynn scurried after him to the keep’s main double doors.

  They slipped inside, finding themselves in the empty entryway where the passage leading to the library’s center doors met the main corridor along the inside of the building’s front. Wynn cringed a little at the cold lamp above the door, which exposed them too much.

  “We are to meet Chane inside the library’s southeast door,” Ore-Locks whispered.

  “This way,” Wynn answered, turning right and stepping past him.

  Almost immediately, his large hand clenched the back of her cloak. He pulled her one-handed back behind himself, as if she weighed no more than a puppy.

  “Stop doing that!” she growled.

  “Shush!” he whispered, and then headed onward.

  Trying to be quiet, they quickly made their way to where the next left turn led to the library’s southeast door. Once around the corner, they nearly ran for that door. Wynn exhaled in relief once they stood before it. This was going much more smoothly than she’d anticipated, and she gripped the door’s handle and twisted it.

  It turned only a fraction of what it should and clacked softly to a stop.

  “No!” she rasped through her teeth.

  “Shush!” Ore-Locks warned again.

  Wynn grabbed the handle with both hands and tried to twist it again, and still the door wouldn’t open. Her frustration turned to anger.

  That damn Rodian—this had to be his doing. It wasn’t enough to lock her up. He had to lock up the whole keep.

  She braced her feet, prepared to heave on the handle with all of her little body. Ore-Locks’s hand quickly closed over both of hers, and she glared at him. He only glared back. He was much better at it.

  Too much noise, he mouthed.

  Wynn stared at the door. Perhaps Ore-Locks could slip through the stone wall to get inside. Then again, he couldn’t take her with him, as he wasn’t as skilled in that as his brethren. Even Chane had difficulty in walking through stone with Ore-Locks, and Chane was dead.

  “Chane could not have opened it, either—or it would be open,” Ore-Locks whispered. “We should head back and find another route, as planned.”

  But he appeared hesitant as he glanced back up the passage.

  If Wynn understood right, Chane would’ve left a glove outside the main doors if he couldn’t secure this path. There had been no glove. So where was Chane? She waved to Ore-Locks as she stepped back up the passage. Ore-Locks quickly followed, not letting her get ahead of him.

  “There are two other entrances,” she whispered. “One to the north and one straight in from the entrance. Perhaps he got in through one of those and hasn’t had time to let us know somehow.”

  Ore-Locks shook his head, his red ponytail switching across his broad shoulders.

  “Maybe,” he answered. “We will check the center doors first, as they are nearest. Just remember that I cannot be seen by anyone but you.”

  A part of her wanted to tell him to flee on his own, straight through the walls, now that he’d gotten her out of her room. After all she had put Ore-Locks through in their hunt for Bäalâle, she wasn’t about to have him suffer in being arrested with her. But for as far as this plan had gone, she doubted he would willingly leave her.

  That he’d come to help her at all, at Chane’s request, left Wynn even more guilt ridden over the secret she’d kept from a tortured man who was a keeper of the honored dead of Dhredze Seatt. And stranger still . . .

  It appeared Chane had a friend in Ore-Locks. For as little as was known or believed in Wynn’s land concerning the undead, Ore-Locks, as a stonewalker, with their way of life, should hold any being like Chane as an enemy.

  As they reached the passage’s end, Ore-Locks held out his free arm, blocking Wynn’s way. He set his iron staff’s butt silently on the floor stones and peered a long while around the corner toward the far entryway. Finally, he hefted his staff and nodded to her.

  Wynn took a step, and Ore-Locks immediately halted. Before she could ask, he grabbed her arm, hauling her back around the corner as he retreated. She frowned at his sudden panic, for she hadn’t seen anyone out in the main passage.

  “There’s no one there,” she whispered.

  “Footsteps,” he countered.

  Wynn heard nothing, but she watched Ore-Locks’s eyes wander. He lowered his head, and at first it looked like his eyes half closed, or he was looking at his feet. Wynn did the same, studying his great boots planted firmly on stone, and then she remembered . . .

  Stone and earth were everything to the dwarven people. They lived upon and within it, even listened to it, and more so for a stonewalker. Ore-Locks could hear—feel—sound through stone in touching it. He had never been wrong in this in the brief time Wynn had known him.

  “The weight of man,” Ore-Locks whispered, his eyes still half-closed. “Wearing boots . . . somewhere north of us . . . inside this building . . . and closing.”

  Wynn tensed and looked toward the corner and some four feet of the main passage still in view. A man wearing boots hard enough for that faint vibration to carry? Was one of the guards inside, walking sentry? Or was it Rodian, and that’s why he’d disappeared from the courtyard?

  “He is coming toward the front passage!” Ore-Locks whispered.

  Wynn jerked once on his sleeve and ducked out into the main passage before he could catch her. She turned southward, hurrying farther down, away from the entrance and all other ways into the library.

  Hawes whirled around, away from Chane, and went still. He followed her intense gaze to the chamber’s closed door. With his senses still widened, he made out two sets of hurried footfalls—one light, one heavy—rushing away down the front passage beyond that door.

  Hawes stood there too long. Obviously she had heard those faint footsteps, though he was not certain how. His fear of her began to fade as another concern took its place.

  “Wynn needs help,” he said, breaking the long silence, “more than I can give. The weight of it all is too heavy for her.”

  Hawes stood there a little longer before her head alone turned, like some gray predatory owl noticing him again. Without a word, she closed the distance between them and grabbed his hand that protruded from the wall.

  Chane panicked, fearing that with a mere touch she would entomb him in stone. She was slight, and yet it had been easy for her to jerk him halfway through the wall.

  Hawes whispered something so brief and quiet that Chane did not catch it. She pulled lightly upon his hand.

  Suddenly, he felt as if he were encased in mud or at least something softer and more pliable than stone. He lunged forward before that sensation vanished, and as soon as he was free of the wall, he sidestepped away from Hawes.

  Once again he had lowered himself to ask for her help. As yet she had not said no. Much as he did not wish to damage a potential alliance, he was not letting her touch him again.

  She turned her back on him, as if this meant nothing to her, and walked away.

  “Remain here until I return,” she said.

  She cracked the chamber’s door enough to peek out, and then widened the opening, leaning out to look the other way along the passage.

  “Premin,” a low male voice called from outside.

  Hawes’s head instantly rotated to the right. She pulled the door wider, causing it to creak loudly, and then stepped out and shut it.

  Chane was alone, still too lost in confusion to even rush to the door.

  Wynn scurried southward along the main passage with Ore-Locks right behind her. Her eyes were on the passage’s far right end and the door into the initiates’ lecture
hall. It was one place no one might look, and at least it had another door in its rear, leading elsewhere. Then she heard those more distant footsteps echoing down the corridor from behind her.

  Any moment, some guard or even Rodian himself would step into the main passage’s northward end. And she panicked even more.

  A loud creak filled the passage, much closer behind than those footsteps.

  Wynn’s breath caught as she looked frantically about. She heard Ore-Locks stop, and she turned to look behind. With no choice, she grabbed the nearest door handle on the passage’s left side.

  “In here!” she whispered.

  Ducking through the door, she found that Ore-Locks had already appeared inside—straight through the wall—and she realized they were in one of the smaller classrooms. She closed the door as Ore-Locks inhaled, held it, and shook his head.

  Wynn slumped against the side wall beside the door, panting from fright. For the moment, they were hidden, but again they’d been cut off from escape. And where in the world was Chane?

  Rodian’s footfalls echoed down the northern passage. As he reached the turn into the front main corridor along the building, he saw someone lean out of a door just beyond the entryway. The figure was too dark to make out beyond the entryway’s dim light, but he knew who it must be.

  “Premin,” he called.

  Hawes turned her head, her cowl now down, and looked straight at him. She stepped out and closed the door, walking up the passage to pause and wait in the entryway.

  “Is everything well?” she asked as he reached her.

  He looked past her to the door she had closed. “Is something amiss in there?”

  “I mislaid one of my notebooks earlier today. I thought to check for it while looking around.”

  His gaze dropped to her empty hands.

  “It must be somewhere else,” she added. “I will have to retrace my steps in the morning.”

  “Did you find your wayward initiate?”

  Hawes shook her head slightly, only once, and turned for the main doors, reaching for a handle. “I may have been . . . misinformed.”

  Rodian wasn’t fooled by this maneuver amid their conversation; she was trying to draw him out of here and back into the courtyard. He had a choice to make quickly: either see what she’d been up to or follow her and dig further into what she was hiding. With regret, he chose the latter.

  Hawes was already outside, holding open the door. To both their surprise, as Rodian stepped out, Dorian came running toward them across the courtyard.

  “Premin!” he began in a rush. “You must . . .”

  At the sight of Rodian, Dorian’s voice failed.

  Of course it did, and Rodian simply stared, daring the young metaologer to finish. These sages would hardly allow their smallest inner workings or secrets to reach his ears or eyes. His anger began rising.

  Dorian backed up in silence, still looking at Hawes. Rodian turned on the premin as well, ignoring the reticent young metaologer.

  “I assume something else is now amiss,” he said, not bothering to make a question of it.

  “All appears to be as it should,” she answered. “At least for immediate concerns. My apologies for taking your time. I will leave you to attend to your own concerns, as I . . .”

  She paused, glanced once at Dorian, and then looked casually about the courtyard.

  “I should see Domin High-Tower,” she finished, “concerning distribution of stores that arrived this evening.”

  “At this time of night?” Rodian asked.

  “He is often up late in his study.”

  The premin’s casual manner was as much out of place as her earlier mad dash across the courtyard to reach the main building. Rodian looked directly at Dorian as he spoke to Hawes.

  “Exactly what did you mean earlier when you told this one to stop and—”

  “Captain!”

  Lúcan’s shout jarred Rodian’s concentration. His corporal came jogging across the courtyard from the door to one of the gatehouse’s inner towers. Lúcan halted with a curt nod to Rodian.

  “Sir, one of the men on the wall is missing,”

  “Missing?”

  “Jonah reported when he came to the front on his last half circuit. He hadn’t seen Maolís anywhere along the rear wall.”

  Rodian’s stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a rock, and he turned on Hawes. “Corporal, escort the premin to her study and see that she remains safe there.”

  “Captain,” Hawes said, “I am perfectly safe on my—”

  “I insist,” Rodian interrupted. “Your council called me to protect this place against intruders. One of mine is missing, leaving a breach in security.”

  She breathed in quickly, as if about to argue further.

  “For your own protection, Premin,” Rodian continued, “as now required of me. Corporal?”

  Lúcan turned to Hawes and gestured toward the courtyard’s northwest side. Hawes hesitated a bit longer, as if uncertain what to say. But what could she say?

  She finally gave Rodian a slight nod and turned to walk off ahead of Lúcan. Dorian backstepped after the pair, still watching Rodian.

  “Return to your duty, Dorian,” Hawes ordered.

  As soon as all three entered the northwest storage building, Rodian turned at a jog for the gatehouse tunnel. Upon reaching the portcullis, he looked out and up through its beams.

  “Jonah, are you there?” he called out.

  “Yes, sir,” his guardsman answered from above in the tower’s gear room.

  “Rouse Angus and get down here—now!”

  Rodian turned back up the tunnel. If there was an intruder, he would no longer be spotted from the walls. He was already inside.

  “Hurry,” Brot’an whispered.

  Leesil bit his lower lip against a retort. He was doing his best, and with this lock, Brot’an wasn’t going to do any better. Through the picks, Leesil felt something inside the lock that wasn’t normal. He should’ve expected that it wouldn’t be easy getting through a keep of sages so paranoid about secrets that they’d locked up Wynn. But that didn’t account for the poor latch on the library’s upper window.

  He set upon the lock again, trying by feel to open it.

  “Hold the light closer,” he said.

  Brot’an did so, though the crystal was now dimmer than before.

  “Rub it,” Leesil said. “That should fix its light.”

  With a frown, Brot’an did so, and the crystal brightened a bit.

  Through his picks, Leesil felt something give. “Got it,” he breathed.

  Brot’an raised the eyebrow with the scars running through it, stepped back, and pocketed the crystal. Everything went dim but for light on the ceiling from some other faraway lamp in the library.

  Leesil tucked away his tools and rose. He gripped the handle and looked to Brot’an, who nodded. He opened the door, prepared to step out into some passage through the keep. Well, there was a passage, but it was too dark to see anything beyond half a dozen yards.

  This building built in the keep’s old inner bailey was flush against the keep wall. When he and Brot’an had surveyed it from outside the grounds, they knew somehow it had to have an entrance into the keep’s main building. They’d anticipated a locked or barred door in what they’d discovered was a library, but . . .

  “Give me the crystal,” Leesil said in a low voice, and held out his hand.

  Even before Brot’an dropped it into his palm, the crystal’s light exposed the problem.

  Leesil cursed softly under his breath.

  Of course there would be a passage connecting this building through the keep’s old, massive wall. He had simply hoped that the sages, likely living on stipends from their local monarchy, wouldn’t waste money on a second door.

  But there it was, another few yards down the dark, narrow passage.

  Leesil strode to the second door, gripped its handle halfheartedly, and gently twisted. Of course it was locked. With a s
igh, he handed the crystal back to Brot’an and crouched to pull out his tools once more.

  Chane tried to listen at the door of the small room, hoping to hear whatever might be said outside. He was almost certain that the other voice out in the passage belonged to Captain Rodian. Then came the muted sound of the main doors opening, and perhaps a third voice outside before the door swung shut. It had all been too quick, too quiet, and nothing more reached him.

  He stood there in indecision.

  Hawes had told him to wait, but she had not returned. What had she been talking about with the captain? Who was that third voice out in the courtyard—where Ore-Locks and Wynn would have to come through? Had Hawes herself somehow run afoul of Rodian’s guards?