Between Their Worlds Page 33

  Chane had heard two sets of footsteps earlier, but they could have belonged to anyone. He had lost track of time amid all these mistakes and mishaps. Those steps could have even been Rodian and one of his guards searching the keep.

  With the captain moving freely about, in and out of the courtyard, it seemed unlikely that Wynn and Ore-Locks had reached the main building. Perhaps they were still stuck in her room. If so, Wynn would be watching out her window, waiting for the courtyard to clear.

  Chane needed a way to check and see, without having to step into the courtyard—or drop a glove outside the main doors. He could wait no longer for Hawes and cracked open the door, wincing as it creaked.

  Inching it open, slowly broadening his view, he found the whole main passage empty for as far as he could see. He crept out, heading northward toward the kitchens.

  There was one route to where Chane might view Wynn’s window across the courtyard: in the top of the storage building, well above Hawes’s study in the underground floors.

  “Can you feel any vibrations?” Wynn whispered, huddling with Ore-Locks behind the door of the dark room.

  “Nothing,” he answered.

  A tentative hope rose in Wynn. She pulled her cold-lamp crystal from her pocket and rubbed it. Soft light illuminated Ore-Locks’s clean-shaven, broad face. His brow was furrowed in frustration.

  “I’ll have a look,” she said.

  “Do not—let me,” he said, and turned to the wall beside the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Having a look.”

  Ore-Locks pressed his face against—into—the stone wall. The stone’s dark, mottled gray texture began to flow over him, as if he were becoming the stone itself.

  Wynn grabbed the back of his cloak and heaved before his ears sank out of sight. Ore-Locks straightened up as his head came out of the wall.

  “What is it now!” he whispered sharply.

  “What if someone sees you like that?”

  He leaned into her face. “Do you think you and your little crystal would attract less attention?”

  “I was going to cover it,” she argued.

  “You will still have to lean out in plain sight to look far enough up the passage.”

  “At least I wouldn’t look like a gargoyle’s head sprouting from the wall!”

  “You are a lot of—”

  “Don’t . . . you say it,” and Wynn leaned in to him this time. “I’m sick of people telling me I’m so much trouble.”

  Ore-Locks’s mouth tightly closed in a flat line. One of his eyebrows rose higher than the other.

  “Oh, fine!” she said, and he turned away, putting his head into the wall.

  Even after the times Wynn had seen this before, it was still disturbing to see stone practically flow through and over him, as if it were turning him into a statue. It stopped halfway down his great bulk once he’d finished leaning out through the thick wall. Only from his waist down did he still stick out in the room, but he was taking too long.

  Ore-Locks suddenly lurched back into Wynn. She grabbed his cloak again to keep herself from being knocked over. His jaw was clenched, and in the silence of the little room, Wynn heard the creak of another door out in the passage.

  “This is ridiculous,” she whispered.

  For the first time since Ore-Locks’s appearance, he looked truly infuriated. “Everything around you turns ridiculous!”

  Wynn bit back a retort. After all, he wasn’t wrong.

  Leesil managed the second lock quickly, now that he knew what to feel for. A click answered his manipulations. He tested the handle carefully, nudged the door just a little to see that it would open, looked up at Brot’an, and nodded. Then he hurried to gather his tools. As he stood up, Brot’an pocketed the crystal.

  Leesil inched the door open, but upon looking out, he found himself staring up a long, empty passage. By its make and stonework, it should be part of the keep’s main building. He’d hoped to keep any encounters to a minimum, but even at this time of night he hadn’t expected to run into no one.

  Had the city-guard captain called a curfew? Well, if so, then so much the better.

  He shrugged at Brot’an, and they both stepped through the door.

  Leesil led the way, and when they neared an intersection at the passage’s end, he flattened against the right wall as he slid forward. He watched to the left of the main passage, until he reached the corner, and then carefully turned to face into the wall. Tilting his head, he used only his left eye to peer to the right up the long, broad passage.

  By the length of the last passage they’d entered, he guessed that this main corridor ran parallel to this building’s inner wall. The courtyard had to be beyond it, just outside.

  A light halfway down spilled illumination into the long, broad passage, but he couldn’t see a lantern or lamp. There was some type of recess there on the left. Beyond it, the passage continued northward, too dark to clearly see its end. For as few lights as were here, perhaps that recess held a door out into the courtyard.

  Leesil backed around the corner and whispered, “There’s a possible way out just up ahead.”

  Brot’an nodded, urging him on, and Leesil rounded the corner.

  Rodian reached the courtyard again as Angus and Jonah came out of the gatehouse’s inner northward tower. He waved them toward the keep’s main doors and then followed, sweeping the entire courtyard with his eyes.

  Jonah reached the doors first, and both men paused and waited.

  “I want a full search of the interior,” Rodian ordered. “Every room, as fast as we can move without missing anything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jonah pulled the doors open and Angus stepped inside. Rodian was about to follow his men when a muffled shout stalled him.

  “Sir!”

  Turning, he spotted Lúcan half stumbling out a door in the northwest building . . . and he was alone.

  “Go!” Rodian ordered Angus and Jonah, and then trotted to meet his corporal.

  Chane had just darted past the entryway to get away from its light, and he began to make his way up the main passage’s northward half with care. He was still uncertain if Rodian and Hawes were the only ones who had come into the main building.

  If he could reach the kitchen and cut through its rear access, he would end up on the lower floor of the old granary and stables now used for storage and workshops. Once he’d reached its top floor, he might get a look across the courtyard to Wynn’s window. But he’d gone only few paces past the entryway when he heard a sound so quiet—almost nonexistent—that a living being might have missed it.

  Flattening against the passage’s outer wall, he looked behind himself, southward along the main passage. Light spilling from the entryway made it hard to be certain, but beyond that glimmer he thought he saw the darkness move.

  For one instant Chane thought of turning and running, and then it struck him that he would have more clearly heard a guard on patrol. In the dark beyond the entryway, Chane thought he saw a figure approaching, perhaps slightly crouched in stealth.

  Something—someone—had covertly entered the keep.

  Chane drew his sword but kept it out of sight at his side so it would not reflect any light. Whether an invader was after Wynn or something or someone else, he was not letting it remain here. Then he saw something more—another, much taller shape in the dark—coming up the passage as the first one drew near the entryway’s light.

  The first one was half bent over, creeping. Of medium height, the figure’s face and hair were hidden by a long wrap of dark cloth. Chane glimpsed the same on the taller one; it was now clear that both were male.

  Neither were guards or sages.

  The first one froze, almost straightening, and stared up the passage, as if he saw Chane hiding beyond the entryway. Chane saw slanted, amber eyes; he was facing a pair of elves. What were any of the Lhoin’na doing here, sneaking in like thieves in the night?

  Chane was
not about to ask even as he stepped out from the wall, raising his sword.

  All of the waiting and hiding and waiting was wearing on Wynn and turning her stomach into a knot. Wherever Chane was, he too had to be panicking by now. His simple plan had gone completely awry.

  “We have to go!” she whispered. “If you don’t try the door again, I will.”

  Ore-Locks grimaced, looking uncertainly at the door.

  “If we’re caught in here together, it will look even worse for you,” she added.

  With his mouth tight, Ore-Locks reached for the door, but his hand stopped halfway.

  “Oh, what now?” Wynn whispered in frustration.

  He pointed down at the floor, and for at least the fourth time tonight, Wynn wanted to groan. He must have felt something in the floor stones, yet another someone walking past outside in the passage.

  Ore-Locks stood still, watching the door, even as he asked, “By the ancestors, how many of your people go wandering about in the dark? It is like one of my people’s tram stations out there, at the end of the workday!”

  Wynn had no answer. Once again, he wasn’t wrong.

  Leesil stopped before the entryway, seeing the cold lamp mounted above the broad and stout double doors in the recess halfway up the broad corridor. He was uncomfortably aware of being too exposed.

  Something beyond the entryway in the passage’s other half caught his eye, something too light-colored to hide for long in the dark.

  He fixed on a form flattened against the passage’s outer wall, and then he straightened just a little. He swung his left hand down, reaching for a winged blade strapped to his thigh. The form beyond the doors’ recess stepped away from the wall . . . with a longsword in its hand.

  Leesil heard the soft sound behind him of something sliding out of cloth. He knew Brot’an had drawn his blades. All Leesil’s plans drained away, like alley sludge into a city sewer under a downpour.

  Killing had never been part of his plan. Whoever this other man was, he was neither a guard nor a sage and had no like compunction against bloodshed. And any noise would quickly draw attention from elsewhere.

  The shadowed figure took a step, and the barest bit of light from the recess touched him.

  Leesil saw pale features inside the cloak’s hood . . . and then he couldn’t breathe.

  The pale man with jaggedly cut red-brown hair hanging around his face just glared, slowly lifting the tip of a sword made of strangely mottled steel.

  It was Chane.

  Shock and hatred made Leesil break into a mild sweat. An undead, one of the worst he’d ever met, was inside the keep among all these defenseless sages, including . . .

  Leesil’s throat went dry. Chane should be an entire continent and ocean away. And he was here, and Wynn was here.

  What had that naive little sage done this time?

  Leesil jerked out a winged blade, snapping its sheath lashing in half.

  Chane froze as the taller elf drew two long stilettos out of his sleeves. Both blades appeared too light-toned for normal steel. He tilted his sword up, raising its tip in preparation, and the shorter elf ripped something out of a sheath on his thigh. Chane instantly fixed on that weapon.

  He knew it, and he looked in the first elf’s eyes, glaring back at him.

  Chane froze in indecision. It was Leesil.

  Leesil inched to the far edge of the entryway and shifted sideways, clearing the way for his taller companion.

  Chane’s hunger rose as the beast inside him thrashed in panic for self-preservation. Despair came, as well. It was all truly over now.

  Magiere, Leesil, and Chap must have devised their own scheme to reach Wynn. In such a sick turn of fate, they had launched their attempt on the same night as Chane. Now he had run right into one of them in his own attempt to rescue Wynn. Even if he had been willing to explain, Leesil would never hesitate long enough to hear him.

  Chane’s promise to Wynn became worthless under the hate in Leesil’s amber eyes. He braced himself, ready for Leesil to close in, and kept one eye on the taller elf with the stilettos.

  Then he heard one of the main doors open.

  Flattening against the passage’s wall, he watched Leesil and his tall companion do the same on the entryway’s far side, and then Chane leaned his head out, trying to see.

  Two guards with red tabards over chain armor stepped through one of the main doors.

  Chane’s thoughts went blank for an instant. How much worse could this situation become? And then . . .

  Anyone who cared for Wynn had to remain free in here, especially any who were capable of finding, protecting, and rescuing her. It simply could not be him.

  Chane knew Leesil would think exactly that. Between the choice of getting to her or getting rid of him, Leesil would choose Wynn. And Chane knew what had to be done.

  He stepped away from the wall into full view, sword in hand. To his frustration, neither guard looked his way. Before Leesil could shout a warning at them, Chane snapped his sword tip against the passage wall.

  At that sharp ring of steel, both guards looked his way, and their eyes widened.

  “Stop!” one of them shouted.

  Chane took off up the passage, heading north, as two sets of running, booted feet sent echoes chasing after him.

  This time, Wynn clearly heard an unfamiliar voice shouting “Stop!” out in the passage. Only an instant of confusion came and went before she thought of Chane.

  He must have tried another route into the library and been spotted. He’d have to fight, perhaps kill a guard, to avoid being captured. If they captured him, locked him up in a cell—even one without a window—by dawn they would see him go dormant. Anyone checking on him would find a dead man . . . until he rose again at dusk.

  In being seen here, Chane’s skulking would cause a guild-wide alarm, and it would all get even worse.

  Wynn grabbed the door’s handle, and Ore-Locks reached out to stop her.

  “We have to go now!” she whispered, and jerked the door open.

  Leesil’s mind went blank as two guards raced away up the passage’s other half after Chane. A barrage of horrors from the past flooded his emptied head, rushing in on him all at once.

  Chane had been with Welstiel when they’d all converged upon the ice-bound castle of Li’kän, that ancient undead. That had been where they’d found the first orb, and Wynn had found all of those old, rotting books she’d so desperately wanted to bring home, though there were vastly more than they could carry. But to get that far, they’d fought against healer monks turned to feral undead by Welstiel . . . and Chane.

  Osha had been badly injured, as had Chap, who had also nearly been pulled over the side of an abyss. Chane had been there, in the middle of it all.

  The night before, Chap had sensed an undead in this city, in Calm Seatt. It had happened somewhere near where Shade disappeared. And Shade was supposed to be with Wynn.

  Every time Chane crossed their path, it always had something to do with Wynn.

  Leesil snatched up the amulet hanging about his neck. Magiere had given it to him long ago, once she no longer needed it to track undeads. It always glowed whenever one was near.

  It wasn’t glowing even a little as he dangled it before his face. It would’ve by the time he’d even entered this building, but it hadn’t even grown warm against his chest to warn him. Yet Chane had been standing there, barely a dozen paces away.

  “We move on,” Brot’an said quietly.

  Leesil startled to awareness, looked at the main doors, and everything seemed wrong now. An extra guard had appeared on the wall. Two more had come into the building from the courtyard. There was no way to see what was going on out there. Something had changed since he and Brot’an had scouted this place.

  “No,” he answered. “There will be more guards outside, so we need to find a way from one building to the next. We head back to this passage’s far end and look for another door that might lead into the structures along
the keep’s southeast side . . . where Chap spotted Wynn.”

  He didn’t like taking blind paths in desperation, but he saw no other choice. As he turned, he found Brot’an looking up the passage where the guards had now vanished. The distinct pucker of a scowl showed between the butcher’s feathery eyebrows, but he finally nodded in agreement.

  Leesil stepped beyond Brot’an, leading the way, and then stopped.

  Just beyond the first intersection they’d come out of into the main passage, a door swung open.