Барб Хенди - A Wind in the Night

“Our thanks,” Brot’an said.

As the man shrugged with a smile and walked on, Brot’an didn’t move. Instead he glanced back, his amber eyes moving over Chap, Magiere, Leesil, and finally Wayfarer. He exhaled audibly.

“One more time we take rooms at an inn,” he said flatly, and the notion didn’t appear to please him. “Tomorrow we try to find another ship.”

In spite of Leesil’s disgust at ever agreeing with Brot’an, his thoughts echoed one more time . He wondered how many more times there would be until all of this was over, and they could finally go home.

Two evenings after Chane had given Wynn the scant description of the messenger, he once again sat in his room at the guild with little to do. After her cursory visit at dusk, she had taken that brooding elf to the main hall for supper.

Chane had no desire to join them, to sit at a crowded table, pretending to eat, while Wynn slathered pity all over Osha, who would pick at his food and speak to her in Elvish. Chane had already suffered through that once the night after Osha’s arrival. He would not repeat it again.

Instead he paged through a history text not intended for public use and fought to read the complex and compact Begaine symbols. If he could master these, he would be more help to Wynn in her research—unlike Osha. In fairness to Kyne, the girl was an adequate teacher, and her natural talent with texts and languages was enviable; he was progressing quickly enough.

Chane turned another page.

Later he was uncertain what pulled his attention.

Something made him look up to his room’s outer door ... as the wall beside it appeared to shift. He grabbed the hilt of his longsword leaning against the desk and stripped off its sheath as he rose, his legs shoving his chair back with a scrape across the floor.

Gray wall stones bulged inward as something pushed through them. The color of stone flowed away as a cloak’s hood overshadowing a broad face surfaced out of the wall.

Chane relaxed—and frowned irritably—as he set his sword’s mottled dwarven steel blade on the desktop’s side.

Thudding footfalls landed upon floor stones. A cloaked and stout hulk, easily twice as wide as Wynn but no taller, stood within the room. One overly broad hand pulled back the hood, and a stocky dwarf looked Chane up and down after a glance at the sword.

“Could you not use the door for once?” Chane rasped.

“I did not wish to be heard knocking,” Ore-Locks replied. “Especially after our last outing in this keep.”

Chane had no response for that, considering what his ... friend ... ally ... or something less definable had done in helping to free Wynn from confinement here not long ago.

Beardless, something uncommon for male dwarves, Ore-Locks’s red hair flowed to the shoulders of an iron-colored wool cloak. Though he looked young, perhaps thirty by human standards—so likely sixty or more for a dwarf—Chane knew better.

Ore-Locks was older than that, because of his life among the Hassäg’kreigi—the “Stonewalkers”—of Dhredze Seatt, the caretakers for their people’s honored dead. He no longer wore a stonewalker’s armor of steel-tipped black leather scales, though he still bore their twin battle daggers upon his belt. But the stout dwarven sword sheathed on his belt, and the long iron staff in his large hand, were both a bad sign.

Why would he feel the need to travel fully armed?

He was dressed plainly in brown breeches and a natural canvas shirt, and Chane saw the burnt-orange wool tabard through the split of the dwarf’s cloak. Again, not a good sign.

Ore-Locks had donned his past travel disguise as a holy shirvêsh of Bedzâ’kenge—“Feather-Tongue”—the Eternal, or dwarven saint, of history, tradition, and wisdom.

Chane had once been enemies with this dwarf, but by the end of their journey to Bäalâle Seatt—a fallen civilization of the dwarves—they had forged something between them that led to an unexplainable trust. Even Wynn had entrusted the dwarf with the safety of the orb of Earth.

However, Ore-Locks did not make social calls.

“What has happened?” Chane asked.

Ore-Locks leaned his iron staff against the wall and stepped closer. “Someone breached the underworld ... managed to get through the portal below the market in Chemarré.”

“That is not possible.”

Frowning, Ore-Locks glanced away. “We think the would-be thief must have slipped through unseen when the portal was opened to bring down supplies.”

“Would-be thief?”

“Whoever it was headed straight for the ... the spot through which Wynn was first taken to the hidden pocket in the earth where we store the ancient texts for the guild. The same place, with no physical entrance, where I had the orb hidden.”

Chane went silent, more than alarmed now.

Wynn had removed a small wealth of ancient texts—written by the first vampires to walk the world—from the library of the six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks of the eastern continent. This was the same place where Chane had stumbled upon the scroll that he brought to her later. Upon Wynn’s return to her own guild branch, her superiors had confiscated all the texts and given them to the Stonewalkers for safekeeping. One or two stonewalkers were occasionally given the task of bringing certain texts to the guild for the ongoing translation work.

This was done with great secrecy, and only guild superiors had access to the material.

At present Chane was far more worried about the orb.

“You have to move it,” he said.

Ore-Locks shook his head. “The orb is safe where it is. Only a member of my caste could walk through stone to it, let alone know where it is ... though ... that wall in line with the deeper cave pocket was where the interloper was spotted. All clan leaders and constabularies have been alerted with a description of the thief.”

“You do not have him in custody?”

Stonewalkers could move through any earth and stone, and nothing could elude them. They had once even pinned down the wraith Sau’ilahk.

Ore-Locks drew himself to full height with a long exhale. “No, she—or he—vanished.”

Chane’s whole body tightened: he had heard a similar uncertain description too recently.

“What do you mean, ‘she or he’?”

Ore-Locks settled in the chair before the desk as if weary, which was not like him. “I only caught the barest glimpse of the intruder. My brethren were closing in when the interloper simply disappeared. I had barely arrived at that particular cave and ... was hit in the face by a strange wind. The others shared what they saw, claiming it was either a tall woman or a slender man, human by build and wearing a black cloak, gloves, and a mask. Master Cinder-Shard ordered a full search that uncovered nothing.”

Suddenly Chane needed to sit as well. Cinder-Shard was the leader of the Stonewalkers, the most skilled among them.

“When did this happen?”

“The night before last. I came as soon as I could after the search and preparations. When I did not find Wynn in her room, I came looking for you, as you should both be informed.”

Chane locked eyes with Ore-Locks. At a guess, Stonewalkers could make the journey here in less than a day by quickly passing through stone and earth. But there was something more disturbing about the timing of certain events.

“Three nights ago someone matching that description brought a message here for a young apprentice sage ... from the young man’s homeland.”

Ore-Locks straightened up in his chair, his mouth partly open but silent as he stared at Chane.

Chane stood up, heading for the door. “We need to find Wynn. She must be told.”

Ore-Locks rose instantly. “I cannot be seen here. You know this.”