Between Their Worlds

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 sigh, 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?

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.