Between Their Worlds

Chapter 1

MAGIERE TRIED TO remain expressionless. She sat on a stool, amid her friends and loved ones, in an alcove within a catacomb below Wynn’s home—this Guild of Sagecraft in a land far from her own.

The alcove was sparsely furnished, with only a faded oak table and a few stools, but broad archways nearly filled all four of its narrow walls. In one corner stood a tall staff with a leather sheath covering its top.

Magiere barely glanced at her surroundings.

She didn’t think of wanting to go home, to her own home, left behind for so long. She wasn’t even thinking of Wynn in her long gray sage’s robe, still crouched in one alcove archway, or whether Chap—a silver-gray dog like an oversized wolf—had answered the little sage’s last question.

“What happened to you ... all of you ... in the Wastes?”

Hopefully, Chap hadn’t yet answered her. Not that he could’ve in the brief moment that had just passed. Even using the mental “voice” by which he could speak only to Wynn wouldn’t have been enough. Too much had happened for a quick or easy response. But Wynn couldn’t know this. She’d simply asked what anyone might after being apart from her friends for a whole year and seeing the changes in them. Now that they were all reunited, it was just like Wynn to blurt out the first thing that popped into her head.

But even this wasn’t what plagued Magiere. For as soon as Wynn asked her question, Leesil, Magiere’s husband, turned away from everyone and stared blankly into an empty corner of the alcove.

Magiere watched him by the dim light of Wynn’s cold lamp upon the little table, its glowing crystal illuminating the books and papers strewn around it. With Leesil’s back turned and shoulders hunched, his head sagged forward. The tail of his white-blond hair and the ends of a tattered green scarf tied over the top of his head barely reached past the collar of his hauberk, which was covered with worn and scarred iron rings. He stood there with his back to her, his arms folded across his chest.

Magiere couldn’t see his beautiful, half-elven amber eyes. She couldn’t see the old scars upon his wrist, from one frightening moment long ago when he had made her feed on him to save her life. And she couldn’t see the more recent scars that were now all along his forearms.

Leesil wouldn’t look at her.

Right then, Magiere almost did want to go home, to their little Sea Lion Tavern. Given time, he—she—might forget everything. She could have him, just him, and he could have her as he wanted her ... as his partner and wife, with nothing else between them.

Was that even possible?

Almost one year ago, Magiere, along with Leesil and Chap, had parted from Wynn, leaving her here in the safety of the guild. They’d had to travel north to hide the first orb they’d found half a world away. It was an artifact, a dangerous device of some kind that had served an unknown purpose to the Ancient Enemy in a war waged upon the world a thousand years ago. But in Magiere’s time, numerous portents were now hinting that this Enemy would return. She’d been determined to place the orb she’d procured far, far from any harmful hands that might try to use it. But this attempt had brought her more than she’d bargained for ... including her discovery of a second orb.

Magiere wasn’t ready to talk or even think about the horrors that happened on that journey. But after all that occurred, she’d come looking for Wynn. Not just to tell the sage about the second orb, but in the hope that Wynn might have learned something more about these artifacts, about what was coming. There had to be something in all those old books and scrolls Wynn had forced them to carry off when they’d seized the first orb in a lost castle in the highest peaks of Magiere’s own continent.

Chap had safely hidden the two orbs that Magiere had recovered—and only he knew their locations. Yet even this wasn’t enough for Magiere. What did the very existence of the orbs mean to the past and the future? Perhaps in all those dusty old books, taken from that icy castle, Wynn might have uncovered something more.

Magiere knew she couldn’t go home until she was free of her burdens: to hinder the Ancient Enemy and avert another war, to never allow her dhampir heritage to turn her into a pawn, and to follow her own path. But the path she was on now seemed never ending, and it continued to drag her forward.

The silence in the alcove—Leesil’s silence—grew more and more unbearable.

Tonight, Wynn had just told them that in the year they’d been separated, she too had found an orb in some lost dwarven stronghold ... and then she’d revealed that there were two more still to be found. This news had hit Magiere like a wall falling down. There were five altogether—five times the burden Magiere had thought she could be rid of when she’d left her home, again, to hide the first one.

Magiere knew she could not walk away from this, that she and her companions had to find the last two before anyone else. But she closed her eyes in near despair. It was too much to take in—too much for Leesil—and now, after Wynn’s question, he wouldn’t look at anyone, even his wife.

“Magiere?”

She raised her head, though it wasn’t Leesil who’d whispered her name, and she looked to the alcove’s nearest archway.

Wynn stood there, one small hand clutching the opening’s frame stones. Her cowl was tossed back, exposing soft brown hair hanging to her shoulders around an oval, olive-toned face. Those rich brown eyes of hers were too wide and fixed. Worry strained her features as she looked to Magiere, or maybe it was confusion.

Wynn glanced once toward Leesil.

Magiere didn’t follow that gaze. Instead, she noticed Chap watching her. He sat on his haunches beyond Wynn, where the outer passage’s deeper shadows made his fur look almost leaden instead of its true silvery blue-gray. The effect made him appear old and worn, but his crystal blue eyes caught the light of the cold lamp’s glowing crystal. Chap’s eyes burned with twin white sparks, too fierce as he watched Magiere.

Did he want her to answer Wynn’s question?

“What happened to you ... all of you ... in the Wastes?”

No memories rose in Magiere’s mind. Over their journey north, that had become Chap’s most common way to express his intentions. When there wasn’t time for more cumbersome ways for him to communicate, he’d slip into her mind and call up her own memories to try to show her what he wanted to say ... or command.

Magiere suddenly couldn’t take her companions’ scrutiny anymore. Perhaps Wynn expected her to say something, and Chap wished her to stay silent. But she couldn’t tolerate Leesil ignoring everything, everyone ... including her. She had to do something to end this lingering moment.

Magiere reached beneath her cloak, toward the small of her back. She gripped something cold and metallic hooked onto her belt, jerked it out, and slammed it on the small table.

Leesil flinched and spun around, but he looked at it, not her. Wynn stepped farther into the alcove, her gaze fixed on the object as her large brown eyes filled with more confusion.

Magiere had heard Wynn once call such a thing a thôrhk, a word having something to do with the dwarves. It was shaped like a circlet of thick metal—about a fourth of the object was missing—but it had been made that way. Its open ends had knobs or studs that pointed directly across at each other rather than in line with the circlet’s curve.

Wynn reached for it, hesitated, and raised her eyes to Magiere.

“What happened to it?” she began. “It looks so ...”

“It’s not mine,” Magiere said quietly.

Indeed, the one on the table was made of a ruddy metal, and the one Wynn referred to was something else. Magiere tugged open her hauberk’s collar, exposing another open-ended heavy circlet around her neck. But this one was made of a metal so silvery it was almost white.

Wynn’s eyes widened, and her mouth hung open as she looked down at the second thôrhk on the table.

A flurry of questions filled Wynn’s head so fast that the next blotted out the last. She’d always thought Magiere’s thôrhk, her orb “key” or handle, was the only one. In a deep cavern of severe heat, that object had been given to Magiere by the Chein’âs—the Burning Ones—one of the Úirishg, or five mythical races of the Elements. Yet here was another so different from the first. So worn with age it looked almost ancient, and it wasn’t made from the Chein’âs’s white metal.

Where had it come from? What did it mean? Did each orb need its own key? If so, why had Magiere’s been able to open the orb of Water, if her thôrhk wasn’t designed specifically for that one?

Or was Magiere’s thôrhk something special?

In lost Bäalâle Seatt, two of Wynn’s other companions, Chane and Ore-Locks, had found the orb—the anchor—of Earth. Somehow they’d beaten a wraith named Sau’ilahk to it, which had seemed impossible, for that spirit form of an undead, a Noble Dead, had gotten ahead of all of them. Ore-Locks and Chane hadn’t come back with a thôrhk, a key for that orb. If one had been there, perhaps it had been overlooked. Or maybe ...

Wynn turned chill inside.

Sau’ilahk had gone ahead after the orb. What if he’d found it first? But if its key was missing, was that why he hadn’t taken the orb—because he couldn’t have used it? Or had Sau’ilahk, that black-robed monster without a face, taken only the key? And if so, why?

Who is this figure in the black robe with cloth-wrapped hands?

Wynn’s breath caught as Chap’s words erupted in her head in every language she knew. She twisted about, staring at him, and he was on his feet, inching toward her.

“What’s wrong?” Leesil asked.

Wynn swallowed hard when she met his hard, worried eyes. Even Magiere sat upright, her old scowl of suspicion returning. Even so, Magiere’s pale face was lovely. Her long, black hair with its bloodred tints was tucked back behind her ears. Leesil, however, was still studying Wynn, and he frowned.

“I see,” he said. “It’s been so long, I forgot that Chap can jabber right into your head.”

Wynn didn’t relax one bit, annoyed at herself for not being more careful. Indeed, she was the only one with whom Chap could truly “talk.” She couldn’t even begin to wonder how these three had fared without her to give Chap a convenient voice. She eyed Chap sidelong, for his question still hadn’t been answered.

Instead, Wynn quickly stilled her thoughts, banishing all images of Sau’ilahk from her mind, for memories of him could lead to those of someone else....

Her more recent traveling companion, Chane, might already be back from escorting Ore-Locks to Dhredze Seatt—back from hiding the orb of Earth in the last great stronghold of the dwarves. Wynn didn’t need these three old friends learning of Chane’s presence right now. Chane was a physical Noble Dead, a vampire, and Magiere, Leesil, and Chap all hated him, perhaps more than any other undead they’d already finished off.

Wynn needed time to think of a way to explain a great deal, and without Chap overrunning her with questions based on whatever he caught in her errant, rising memories. There were larger issues at stake that needed—

“Journeyer Hygeorht! Why is this animal wandering unattended about my archives?”

Wynn shuddered at the sound of Domin Tärpodious’s aged and crackling voice echoing through the archives. He must have stumbled upon her dog, Shade, somewhere near his chambers. As she stepped toward the alcove’s near archway, Chap’s voice rose again in her head.

We cannot be seen down here.

“But why? When—”

“Uh-oh,” Leesil whispered.

Wynn’s eyes widened. “What did you do?”

Not now. We will discuss our ... hastened entry later.

Before Wynn could ask Chap what he meant, Magiere snatched up the darker thôrhk and tossed Leesil his cloak. She got up too quickly and had to grab the stool before it toppled. Chap hurried by her toward the alcove’s far arch, rumbling at Leesil as he passed.

“It was nothing, honestly,” Leesil whispered, in his usual feigned innocence. “And completely necessary.”

After that, he glanced at Wynn and put a finger across his lips in warning just before Magiere jerked him out the alcove’s far side.

“Wynn?” Tärpodious called out, much closer now. “Get this beast under control! And why was the archive door left unlocked?”

Wynn’s eyes narrowed, but Leesil was already out of sight when she hissed under her breath, “Leesil, I’ll shove those lockpicks where you won’t get them until you ...”

She quickly calmed herself, turning back to the archway.

“Yes, Domin. I’m here,” she called out. “I was just busy in the books and didn’t notice Shade had wandered off. I’ll be right there.”

“Well, be quick about it. Premin Sykion is waiting in her office to speak with you.”

Wynn slumped against the archway’s side. “Valhachkasej’â!”

Sykion was the last person she wanted to deal with tonight, but at least she’d stopped old Domin Tärpodious from coming all the way to the alcove. Now ... she just had to get her friends out of here.

One thing at a time.

Hiding in the back passage, Leesil raised an eyebrow as Wynn uttered his own commonly used elven curse.

“You’re a bad influence, as usual,” Magiere whispered.

This time, he did look at her.

“Me?” he returned. “You think I’m the influence of concern here?”

There was no humor in his voice this time. After everything that had happened to them, she was the influence that worried him most of all. Since finding that second orb, she’d changed. Yet even after that, they—he—had been so close to putting an end to all this and going home.

It would have taken only Wynn’s assuring Magiere that nothing more had been learned—nothing more could be learned—about the orbs. Never mind that they’d found another and that Chap had hidden away the pair. Those cursed lumps of stone could stay wherever they lay, forever. But no ...

Wynn just couldn’t shut up, even once, when it mattered most. The sage had nosed her way into something more, something worse, that Magiere would never let go. There would be no dragging Magiere away now.

Without another word, Leesil stepped back into the alcove.

“I don’t believe this!” Wynn whispered at him as she gathered up her belongings and the strange staff. “You’re here less than a quarter bell in the night, and I’m already in more trouble—and I don’t need your help with that.”

“Trouble?” Leesil returned. “When did you ever need help with that? What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Wynn straightened, and her mouth gaped.

Leesil immediately regretted his words. Wynn was like a little sister to him. It just wasn’t in her nature to sit still for long—or to stay out of anything that caught her attention. If it were, she’d never have joined him, Magiere, and Chap in the first place. Tonight, she’d been so glad, so relieved to see him, and he’d just taken out his long-pent-up frustrations on her.

Moving toward her, he began, “Wynn, I didn’t mean to—”

But before he could finish, she suddenly jumped a little, her expression aghast, and she turned on Chap.

“What?” She exhaled at him, and then her voice rose above a whisper. “Don’t you take his side. You have no idea what I’ve—”

“Quiet, all of you,” Magiere insisted. “Save it ... at least until we’re out of here.”

Everyone went silent at that, even Leesil, though he wondered exactly what Chap had said to the little sage.

Magiere started to glance about, and Leesil followed her attention in puzzlement. She looked around the alcove, through its archways, at the books on the table, and then fixed on Wynn.

“I know you must’ve been working on those texts,” Magiere began quietly. “The ones we hauled out of the Pock Peaks along with the first orb. I need to know anything else you might have learned about the orb—I mean orbs. Or even about these servants of the Ancient Enemy that you mentioned.”

Leesil sighed, long and heavy. The last thing he wanted was Wynn pushing Magiere onward in this obsession. Yet on the journey north, even he’d imagined Wynn finally having the chance to live as the scholar that she was, spending her days digging through all those texts. He’d tried to tell himself that they’d done her a favor by leaving her behind.

But Wynn fell strangely still and mute, perhaps growing a little pale as Magiere went on.

“Before we leave,” Magiere went on, “grab anything you’ve uncovered, or any of the texts themselves. I—we were hoping you could help figure out what these orbs are, what they do, especially now that you’ve told us there are five of them.”

Wynn flinched, and to Leesil’s surprise, she looked stricken.

“Oh ... oh, Magiere,” she faltered. “No, I don’t ... I was never allowed ... The texts aren’t here. They were taken from me as soon as I arrived.”

It was an instant before Leesil realized his mouth had dropped open, and he shut it. It was another instant after hope flooded him that Magiere might at least be slowed down, if not stopped, before he heard Magiere’s sharp whisper.

“What?!”

Wynn became frantic in trying to calm Magiere. “I’ve learned much that you need to know, just the same. Things that might not even be in those texts. I’ll tell you everything, though there’s more I have to figure out, but right now, we have to get you out of here.”

Magiere’s expression went dark at the prospect of another delay. Then Chap huffed once in agreement and padded toward the far archway. Wynn sagged a little and turned to follow him, but Leesil didn’t move.

He watched Magiere heft her pack a little too roughly and follow the sage and the dog. She was tall for a woman, slender but strong, and wore a scarred and weathered studded-leather hauberk under her cloak and a sheathed falchion on her left hip.

Leesil couldn’t take his eyes off her dark hair swinging when she walked. He watched her leave, and he remembered all of the times she had tried to stop him in some scheme or ploy. He was helpless now in stopping her.

He hefted his own pack and stepped out to follow Wynn’s lamp. Its crystal’s white light in the dark seemed as cold as those icy wastes he’d left behind.

Chap padded along beside Wynn as the young sage led the way, scurrying along the dark passages. The way was tight and narrow, for every wall was lined with dusty stone and wooden shelves and casements, all filled with books, cases, and other texts.

But even in this silent rush to get out of the archives, Chap could not stop pondering something he had seen inside Wynn.

In the alcove, the barest, fleeting memories had risen into Wynn’s conscious thoughts. Foremost was one of a tall, black-robed figure, its face hidden in a deep, sagging black cowl. The image vanished before he could catch more. But since that moment, not a single memory had risen in Wynn’s mind.

What was she hiding from him? And how had she learned to do this so well?

Wynn suddenly halted before an overloaded casement along the passage’s right wall. She cast a quick, accusing glance at Leesil, who stood back behind Magiere. Then she frowned, dropping her head to look down at Chap.

“Aside from him breaking in here,” she whispered, cocking her head toward Leesil, “how did all of you manage to get inside to sneak about?”

Chap was lost for words. This was what she now wanted to know?

“It wasn’t hard,” Leesil whispered.

Wynn balled her free hand into a fist, but Chap cut in before she went at Leesil again.

You are right in that we need to leave. Then he added more pointedly, But we all have questions ... and expect answers.

Wynn took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and nodded. When she turned onward, Chap lapped her small fingers with his tongue. In spite of their being caught in a tense moment, he knew she was relieved to see them all.

Chap felt Wynn’s hand drag up over his snout and between his ears, until it came to rest upon his neck. Her little fingers nestled into his fur as he walked beside her. This familiar sensation was something he had not felt in a long, long time, and it did not seem right that the one person in the world he could speak with directly should rejoin him under these circumstances.

Yes, there were questions to be answered. They included whatever foolish notions had gotten into Wynn to make her go roaming about the land after the difficult choice he’d made to secure her here. She should have remained among her own kind, wrapped in the safe haven of humanity.

Then Chap found himself facing an entirely different kind of “meeting.” Beyond the passage’s end ahead, his daughter stood watching him, without blinking.

He kept on at Wynn’s side, halting at the entrance into the cavernous main chamber of the archives. Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with matching, bound volumes of dark leather among a few cedar-plank sheaves of loose pages. Several tables filled the space, lit by cold lamps hung at the chamber’s four corners.

Shade, as Wynn called her, waited before the far stairs that led back upstairs—away from this scholar’s maze beneath the guild. At the sight of his daughter, it was Chap who lost all control of his memories.

He had never forgotten, never would forget, what he had done to her.

Several years ago, he’d been spending what he knew would be his last night among the an’Cróan—the elven people of the eastern continent—and he had fled from their one true city, racing back into the forest. At the next dawn, he would have to leave on an elven ship to watch over Magiere and Leesil on their journey to find the first orb.

Because of this, sacrifices were necessary.

His mate, Lily, had waited for him beyond the forest’s edge.

She stood among the ferns below the long branches of a redwood ... a white majay-hì like no other. Her blue, crystalline eyes held flecks of yellow, and from a distance, sunlight blended her irises to a green almost as verdant as new leaves. He ran his muzzle along hers, inhaled her scent laced with fragrances of the wild Elven Territories, and she sent memories ... visions ... of the children she would bear. It was the most painful joy of his unnatural life, for he would not be there to see them born. And to one child he would do far worse than that.

Chap had already known that he had to leave; that Magiere and Leesil needed him. But after what he had done when his kin, the Fay, learned that Wynn could hear them, he knew he had to protect her from them, as well. As much as Magiere and Leesil needed him, he had to see to Wynn’s safety. Not only as cherished companion, but because even then she was an integral part of what was to come.

He did not spend that last night with Lily trying to forget that he would leave his mate. He tried to remember for her to see all that must be done. Someone else had to be sent to watch over Wynn, for he knew eventually she might be left behind. He gave Lily every memory he held, and in his faltering memory-speak, he begged her for something far worse.

One of their children would be condemned to banishment, or at least that was how a child would think of it.

Only someone akin to himself would have a chance to stand between Wynn and the Fay. A child of his would have to cross a world alone to protect a human. Once Chap had finished making his request, he and Lily lay there through the night. When he left her before dawn, her eyes were still closed, but she could not have been asleep.

But it wasn’t until tonight, when Chap came to find Wynn in this place, this old castle somehow given over to the guild, that he truly knew his request had come true.

Any brief relief drowned instantly in the deepest depths of guilt. The charcoal black majay-hì stood before the far stairwell leading out of the catacombs, watching him. And then his daughter turned away without a sound.

“Everyone wait here,” Wynn whispered. “When I signal, stay low and hurry across to the stairs.”

As she stepped out, passing in front of Chap, he lost sight of Shade. When his sightline cleared, all he saw was the tip of a black tail disappearing into the dark up those darkened, rising steps. Chap stood numbed by pain and regret, barely hearing Wynn’s voice coming from somewhere out of sight.

“Um, Domin, I had to leave some stuff on the table in the seventh alcove, so—”

“Yes, yes, I will see to it. Now run along,” an aged, cracking voice answered. “But leave the key I gave you. When I retire, I will be certain the archives are properly closed ... this time.”

Chap inched forward, and he peeked around the corner.

Wynn stood off to the right, directly in front of a small archway, with her back to the open chamber. In her left hand she held the staff with its leather-sheathed top tilted slightly out. Her other hand was braced on the opening’s right, and the spread of her robe and sleeves somewhat blocked the entrance—so that whoever was inside might not see out.

Her free hand suddenly dropped and swung behind her, repeatedly waving off toward the far stairs.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the person in the chamber. “I thought I locked the door behind me when I came down.”

A humph rose sharply from beyond Wynn as Chap padded softly across the chamber between its four long tables. He heard Magiere and Leesil creeping along behind him.

“Do you know what the premin wanted to see me about?” Wynn asked.

Chap reached the stairwell and ducked in, but he did not climb up. He waited as Magiere and Leesil slipped past him and up the stairs.

“No,” the other voice answered. “I would imagine it has something to do with your latest excursion.”

“All right,” Wynn answered. “And again, I’m sorry about Shade ... and the mess.”

It was only a breath or two before Wynn appeared around the corner to the upward-curving stairwell. Chap waited for her to lead onward, but she paused, looking up the stairs.

The barest flash of two images passed through Wynn’s thoughts. Just as quickly, those surfacing memories vanished. This time Chap caught the second, as well. The first was again that of a tall figure in a black robe and cowl, its cloak appearing to waft under the pull of a night breeze. The second was even more bizarre.

A man in a long cloak with a full hood, wielding a longsword of mottled steel in one hand and a shorter, true sword blade in the other, turned his head. Within his hood, where there should have been a face, Chap saw only a leather mask and black-lensed spectacles with heavy pewter frames where there should have been eyes.

That was all Chap caught before Wynn’s memory vanished, and she hurried up the stairs, brushing one hand over his head as she passed. He hesitated a little longer, watching her disappear around the turn in the steps. All notions of memories slipped away as he thought of a young charcoal majay-hì, someone he should have known before yet had only met but moments ago.

That someone would be waiting at the door above when the others arrived.

Chap slunk up the stairs, his head down, thinking of the daughter who had turned away from him. He could not raise his eyes, even when he reached the top and the others were waiting for him in the keep’s back passage.

Wynn crept around another corner, always peeking ahead before she led the others onward. Shade remained silent at her side the whole way. Wynn looked back once or twice, checking that everyone was still with her. Now Chap remained at the rear.

Shade never looked back once.

Much as Wynn wished there was something she could do for Chap concerning Shade, a much bigger problem clouded her thoughts and filled her with fear.

It wasn’t that she was worried about running into other sages along the way. True enough: visitors shouldn’t be found wandering the halls at this time of night. And she, of all people, being their escort, wouldn’t count for much. No, even encountering Domin High-Tower or High Premin Sykion didn’t worry her.

The only place Wynn could take Chap, Magiere, and Leesil at this time of night might be the last place they should go: her room. And that would also be the first place Chane would wait if he found she and Shade weren’t there.

Wynn fervently hoped that Chane hadn’t returned yet. Or perhaps had come back early and after waiting all this time, he might have gone on to his own guest quarters.

She led her companions all the way to the keep’s front and stopped in the main entryway, holding everyone back again. Her eyes lowered to an unexpected object sitting to one side of the entryway: a small travel chest. Leesil hefted it up and over his left shoulder.

“You left your chest up here?” Wynn asked softly.

He shrugged. “Why not? It was getting heavy. I figured it would be safe among sages. Now, you’ll be finding us rooms here, I’d guess.”

“Well ...” Wynn began to answer. “Yes, of course.”

Normally, the sages welcomed visitors, especially ones from far off that might offer useful information about the world at large. But how could she explain to Leesil, standing here in the entryway, that she was practically a renegade among her own kind, and anyone with her would be treated with equal suspicion by her superiors. The mood of the whole guild had changed over the past six moons, partly because of her.

There wasn’t time to explain it all, let alone all the other questions everyone had.

Wynn glanced left and then right down the long passage running along the front of the keep. Then she stepped forward and cracked open one of the great double doors and peeked out into the courtyard.

It was empty, but this didn’t reassure her. She looked left toward the barracks and up to its last window slit at the far end of the top floor. No light shone there, but that didn’t mean anything; Chane never minded the dark. At that thought, Wynn grew frantic, looking about the courtyard for anywhere else to go.

There simply wasn’t any place to take strangers at this time of night. She couldn’t possibly just tell them to leave and come back tomorrow. Could she? The high premin was already waiting for her, and who knew what trouble she was in now. If it was as bad as the last time, she might not get to speak with her long-lost friends for days, and there was far too much catching up to do.

“What’s the problem?” Magiere whispered.

Wynn turned her head quickly, straining her tense neck. Magiere was flattened against the passage’s nearer side, with Leesil just behind. Chap lingered farther back beyond them. Magiere scowled and settled a hand on the hilt of her falchion. That certainly didn’t help Wynn’s state of mind.

“It’s ... nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” she whispered.

Before Wynn could say more, Shade thrust her head through the cracked door and forced it open as she wriggled out. There was nothing Wynn could do but wave the others on as she stepped out, as well. She only hoped she could make them all wait downstairs from the barracks, on whatever pretense, until she checked her room. And if Chane was there ... then what?

Wynn hurried onward, waving her companions along, though Shade led the way.

“Journeyor Hygeorht.”

Wynn was barely halfway to the barracks door when she spun about at the sharp call of her name.