Between Their Worlds Page 4

  Leesil appeared even more hesitant, still holding Magiere back, but even his expression had gone flat as he scanned the courtyard and all within it. Magiere’s state was always plain to read, but there was no telling what scheme Leesil was concocting even now.

  “Chap!” Wynn whispered in desperation, turning all of her attention upon him.

  She tried to pull a memory to the forefront of her mind, hoping he would catch it. She pictured all of those shelves of old texts she had searched through in the guild’s archives. She pictured the open books, bound sheaves, papers, and her journals as she sat in alcoves late into the night amid her search. And lastly, she pictured the first orb they had all found together, not knowing what it truly was as they prepared to leave the ice-bound castle hidden in the heights of the Pock Peaks.

  Chap’s tall ears pricked up.

  Hopefully, he understood she had to stay where she was. But as Wynn dropped her eyes to look at Shade, she realized the dog had gone silent.

  Shade looked up, and another memory rose in Wynn’s mind.

  Wynn saw in her mind Chane’s blacked-out scroll unrolled before her. It was from a memory of when she had once sat upon the cold stone floor of her room, trying to figure out what had been blotted out on that restored parchment.

  Blind fear swept through Wynn.

  She squelched the memory before it led to one of Chane, and when she looked at Chap again, he was still watching her. Had he seen the scroll in the memory Shade had recalled? Shade fully understood what was necessary. But had Chap caught anything more that Wynn had let slip into her thoughts?

  All that mattered was that Wynn remained here. The archives were her only hope for figuring out whatever was left to find in that scroll. After all, no matter what happened here, she was in no danger from her own superiors.

  But where was Chane?

  Chane Andraso stood in the darkness of Wynn’s room, watching the courtyard below through the one narrow window. He had only just returned from Dhredze Seatt, the stronghold of the dwarves on the peninsula across the bay. The orb that he and Wynn had found was now safe with Ore-Locks, taken into the depths of the dwarven underworld in the care of Stonewalkers. Having found Wynn’s room empty, Chane knew Shade must be with her. With that little comfort, he had decided to await their return.

  It was getting late now, and as his patience waned, his worry grew. Then, standing at the window, he spotted Wynn and Shade suddenly emerge from the keep doors. At the sight of them, his worry drained, replaced by relief.

  But then he clutched the window’s deep ledge; his hardening fingernails grated upon its stone.

  Following Wynn out the doors were Magiere, Leesil, and Chap.

  His initial shock faded, replaced by hate-fueled hunger, all of it fixed upon Magiere. Wynn’s true companions were back. Where did that leave him?

  He dropped a hand to his sword’s hilt. Back on his home continent, these three had hunted him like an animal—like a monster. They viewed any undead as an enemy without question. This had culminated one night in which he had hesitated in killing Magiere, at Wynn’s pleading.

  In turn, Magiere had not hesitated. In one swipe of her falchion, she had taken his head.

  Although Chane had managed to come back from that second death, his hatred for Magiere now almost overrode his love for Wynn. If Magiere started anything, he would not hesitate again. He would be the one to finish it this time. But all his rage wavered as five sages came out of the far building, with Premin Sykion in the lead.

  Chane’s gaze paused at the sight of Premin Hawes, and he grew even more lost as to what was happening down there.

  Should he go down? No, that would only make things worse . . . for Wynn.

  Chane did not believe Wynn could ever be in physical danger from her own people, so for the moment, he stood there and watched.

  Leesil grew more alarmed and uncertain with each breath. As soon as the dark-haired sage in the dark blue robe went at Wynn, he realized he’d lost control here. Magiere, Chap, and Shade had reacted instantly, not that Leesil blamed any of them. There had to be a way to get Wynn out of here. But when Wynn shouted for all of them to stop, she’d focused on Chap, and both dogs had gone suddenly quiet.

  Leesil watched the dogs, waiting for some memory to rise at Chap’s urging that might tell him what was happening. What did Wynn want them to do?

  “Remove her,” ordered the tall, aged woman with the long braid.

  The dark-haired sage took hold of Wynn’s upper arm and started pulling her toward the building where Wynn had first been heading. Before Leesil could even look back, he teetered as Magiere’s pressure vanished. Dropping the chest quickly, he tried to grab for her, but she slapped away his hand and went straight at the dark-haired sage.

  Chap snarled in warning, rushing in on the outside of Magiere, but he spun to face away from her. As Leesil bolted in, he saw what Chap faced.

  Only one sage, the woman with bristling steely hair, had stepped out beyond the others. She stood poised three strides beyond Chap. With one hand outstretched, palm down with her narrow fingers relaxed in an arch, it looked as if she might gently lay that hand upon Chap’s head if she drew closer. But the eyes in that passive, stern face were fixed on Magiere as Leesil caught up.

  Wynn twisted in her escort’s grip and shoved a hand straight into Magiere’s sternum.

  “No!”

  Both Leesil and Wynn’s voices came in the same instant as Leesil grabbed the shoulder of Magiere’s cloak.

  “I’m not leaving you!” Magiere growled, the words slurred too much.

  Leesil grew more anxious. If Magiere lost control here, everything would go straight to all seven hells at once.

  Wynn grabbed the collar of Magiere’s hauberk and jerked hard, forcing Magiere to look down at her.

  “Not this way,” she warned, and looked to Leesil, shaking her head again. “Not now, but soon. Go.”

  Wynn clearly wanted to avoid any confrontation here, as did Leesil and likely Chap. Leesil pulled Magiere away, though she wouldn’t take her eyes off Wynn. All this time, Shade just sat at the door Wynn was dragged toward, as if waiting and knowing how it all had to end.

  Wynn, Shade, and the escort sage vanished from sight. As the door thumped shut, Magiere jerked free of Leesil’s grip, turning toward the other sages in the courtyard. The one beyond Chap had lowered her hand, though Leesil couldn’t figure what that had been about.

  Before Magiere took another step, Chap wheeled on her and huffed twice for “No.”

  “Wynn wants it this way,” Leesil whispered in Belaskian.

  Something in his voice or his words must have gotten through to Magiere. She stood rigid, eyeing all who had cut them off from Wynn.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she nearly spat. “Get her back out here.”

  The remaining four sages, especially the one with hair like a gray porcupine, just stood there looking back, but mostly eyeing Leesil and ignoring Magiere. The woman with the long gray braid struck Leesil as . . . imperious. He didn’t like her.

  “This is an internal affair and no concern of yours,” she said coldly. “Leave or I will summon the Shyldfälches to remove all of you. You can ponder and learn our customs and laws from inside a garrison cell.”

  None of this was playing out at all as Leesil had expected. He, Magiere, and Chap had only arrived in the city tonight. They’d come straight here, anxious to find Wynn and the hospitality of the guild. Through Wynn, Leesil had known the ways of the sages for several years, or thought he did. The few things he hadn’t worried about upon arriving were an open welcome, warm food, and a decent bed.

  This was nothing like what he knew of sages. What was going on?

  Chap huffed once and started toward the gatehouse tunnel. Confused and uncertain, Leesil made the choice to follow his companion since his youth. He snatched up the travel chest and hoped that Wynn had somehow told Chap something to make sense out of all of this.

 
; “We have to go now,” he whispered to Magiere. “We can’t help her if we’re locked up.”

  Magiere’s head swung toward him, and thankfully her irises hadn’t flooded black. At least she still controlled her inner nature.

  Then she turned her ire on the stiffly standing sages again. “We will be back.”

  Leesil almost groaned. Threats weren’t going to help. He pulled Magiere along after Chap, though she resisted before giving in. He didn’t know whether to feel relief or anger at himself. He didn’t want to abandon Wynn any more than the others, but something had passed between Wynn and Chap.

  After all they’d been through since leaving Wynn behind nearly a year ago, Leesil trusted Chap’s instincts—and reasoning—far more than Magiere’s. Once they passed out of the gatehouse tunnel and approached the bailey gate, which emptied out into the city, he heard the clank of gears and a rumbling.

  “What are they doing now?” Magiere asked angrily.

  Of course, he’d heard that sound many times in his youth, when he was enslaved with his parents as a spy and assassin to a warlord in his homeland.

  Leesil turned around and watched the tunnel’s outer portcullis rumble downward. The wedged ends of its vertical beams slammed into the stone pockets of the tunnel opening’s floor.

  Magiere again turned her eyes on him, her mouth tightened in bitten-back fury.

  Leesil hoped more than ever that Chap had some answers from Wynn.

  Still looking down from the window of Wynn’s room, Chane went cold when the dark-haired metaologer grabbed her arm. He shifted back a half step before stopping himself from making a blind rush for the door.

  He would never willingly hurt a sage, but Wynn came before all others. Even so, he forced himself to remain, still not believing she could be in physical danger from her peers.

  Returning to the window, Chane watched the metaologer dragging her toward the barracks door. He had only an instant to see Magiere, Leesil, and Chap being expelled, but he could not care less. All that mattered was what happened to Wynn, and it appeared that the dark-haired metaologer was bringing her up to her room.

  That washed everything else from Chane’s thoughts. No one in the guild knew he had returned, but if the Premin Council had turned its eyes on Wynn again, what would they think of finding him in her room?

  Looking down again, he did not see Wynn or her escort—meaning they were already inside this barracks, which functioned as a dormitory. They would arrive at the door to this room any instant.

  Rushing to the room’s inner side, Chane flattened against the wall behind the door. Almost immediately the door abruptly swung inward. Wynn stumbled in with Shade at her heels, and, to Chane’s relief, no one else entered. Wynn got her footing and whirled around to glare at whoever had shoved her inside, and then her eyes began to widen at the sight of him in hiding.

  Chane put a finger to his lips.

  Wynn quickly averted her gaze and looked out the doorway into the passage.

  Magiere stood helpless outside the gatehouse, staring at the closed portcullis. Being helpless and hobbled made her angry. Confusion amplified that, and the frustrating mix left her edging again toward rage.

  “Come on,” Leesil said, backing toward the bailey gate. “We need to talk to Chap and find out what’s going on.”

  Magiere turned on him as the only outlet for her anger. “What’s there to figure out? We just let Wynn get dragged off . . . and we left her . . . again.”

  Leesil flinched, but the sight gave her no satisfaction. It seemed she couldn’t seem to stop hurting him, even now.

  “Those are her own people,” he responded, his voice even and cold. “She didn’t want an open fight . . . and neither should you.”

  Leesil’s being right didn’t make Magiere feel any better, any calmer.

  Chap barked from the bailey gate, urging them to hurry.

  Magiere fell into step beside Leesil, but she was far from giving up on Wynn tonight—no matter what he thought. She hadn’t known what she would find when they’d come seeking Wynn’s home, but if those sages in the courtyard were indeed Wynn’s people, they had absolutely no regard for her.

  This fortified stone castle didn’t match Magiere’s imagining of a sages’ guild. Back in Bela, the sages lived in a decommissioned barracks given to them by the city’s council. That place had been filled with warmth and kindness, cups of mint tea, faded tables, and stacks of old parchments. This place was more like the buildings of the feudal nobles and tyrants of her own homeland, or those of Leesil’s youth in the Warlands. The small guild annex back in Bela had nothing in common with this Calm Seatt branch.

  Wynn didn’t belong in there.

  Chap’s barking grew insistent, and Magiere walked faster, growing as annoyed with him as she was with Leesil. Why were they both in such a hurry to abandon Wynn? As Leesil leaned forward to open the gate, Magiere’s anger escaped again.

  “We can’t just leave Wynn in there!”

  Chap snarled at her, barked twice for “no,” and then raked the gate with his claws. What did he want now?

  Leesil opened the gate as he answered. “We’re not going to leave her. But we’re also not going to blindly assault this place, let alone the sages. Not until we learn what Chap knows.”

  As soon as Chap had enough room to slip out the gate, he darted northwest, running along the outside of the bailey wall. Leesil quickly followed, and Magiere had no choice but to jog after them.

  In the shadows of the wall’s curve below the west tower, Chap slowed to a halt and turned about. Leesil dropped beside him, put down the chest, and then took off his pack to dig inside it. He pulled out a long, rolled piece of treated leather as Magiere joined them.

  Talking with Chap had been a challenge since they’d left Wynn and gone off on their own. In their earlier days together, after they’d first discovered that Chap was much more than a dog, Wynn had used a “talking hide” inked with Elvish letters and a few words to help him speak. He both read and understood that language. Wynn would ask him questions, and he’d paw or nose the letters or words to answer.

  Later, through Wynn’s fumbling with magic, she became able to hear Chap’s “sent” thoughts like a voice inside her head. That had certainly made talking easier on him, but without Wynn, he’d lost his voice. It proved a greater problem than any of them expected, since neither Leesil nor Magiere understood Elvish. Fortunately, in all his sneaky years with Leesil, Chap had picked up Belaskian, as well. Leesil had created his own version of a talking hide in that language.

  When they’d first journeyed across the world from the Farlands, Wynn had tutored all of them in Numanese. Magiere was quicker than Leesil when it came to spoken tongues, but he was far better than her when it came to written words.

  There was barely enough moonlight to see, and the instant Leesil had the talking hide out, Chap pawed it open on the cobblestones. He went at it with both his nose and one paw flying across letters until Leesil grabbed him by the scruff.

  “Not so fast! What was that about books?”

  “What’s he saying?” Magiere cut in.

  Leesil ignored her. “Chap, start over. What are you talking about?”

  Chap began again, slower this time. Magiere was still left behind in trying to follow the indicated letters, but when Chap finally paused, Leesil looked up, shaking his head.

  “I don’t think Wynn could tell Chap much,” he explained. “Something about the catacombs . . . and all those books, and then some special scroll or parchment. Obviously she didn’t want to leave the keep . . . castle—whatever that place is. Chap thinks she’s afraid of . . . losing access to the archives.”

  Magiere hadn’t known what to expect from Chap, but she’d expected a better reason than this.

  “That’s all he knows?” she demanded. “And he made us leave her in there?”

  Chap’s paw started moving again, and this time, Magiere recognized one word that he spelled out.

 
; “Prisoner?” she said aloud, and she immediately stood up.

  Chap’s furry canine face appeared just as frustrated as Magiere felt. He huffed three times for “maybe” or “uncertain,” and then locked his crystal blue eyes onto hers. As well as dipping into the surfacing memories of anyone in his sightline, Chap could make any memory he’d seen before rise in the owner’s mind. This was sometimes a faster, or simpler, way to communicate.

  Without warning, a rush of memories flooded Magiere’s thoughts.

  First came a clear image of Wynn being captured by Lord Darmouth’s men during their time crossing the Warlands. Those soldiers had dragged her away to lock her up. At that time, there had been nothing Magiere could do to stop it. Even the memory brought up a wave of impotent rage. That same anger had rushed upon Magiere when the dark-haired sage had grabbed Wynn.