Барб Хенди - A Wind in the Night

Chane looked back, seeing the torn expression on the dwarf’s face.

Ore-Locks might be an ally, but if his brethren learned that he had come here ...

The Stonewalkers guarded their secrets with a vengeance. Should word get back to Cinder-Shard that Ore-Locks had been seen on guild grounds—with Chane or Wynn—then Ore-Locks could suffer serious consequences.

“I will tell her,” Chane said. “Go back before you are spotted. We will investigate from here and try to learn about this intruder ... messenger ... and the young sage who received the letters. There may be something more to that. I will let you know, if I can.”

Still appearing troubled, Ore-Locks retrieved his staff. “Do not fear for the orb. No one can reach it.”

“It was good to see you,” Chane said without thinking—and then felt uncomfortable about this, as it was so uncommon for him. Chane was thankful that Ore-Locks did not respond in kind and only nodded once before sinking into the room’s stone wall.

In the keep’s common hall, Wynn finished her supper of lentil stew and grain bread while attempting safe conversation with Osha—and that was becoming more difficult. Worse, Shade didn’t care for lentils, and, after a couple of halfhearted laps from her bowl on the floor, a broken barrage of memory-words kept popping into Wynn’s head.

—Meat?—

“No, this is all there is.”

—Fish?—

“Eat and just be quiet.”

—Cheese!—

Wynn sighed.

“Here,” Osha said, and he tossed a large piece of bread spread with thick butter at the dog.

He hadn’t needed any memory-words from Shade to understand, and she snapped the bread in midflight. It was gone in three chomps.

With a frown at Shade, Wynn rose from the bench. “Shall we take her outside?”

All around them, other sages glanced or outright stared at Osha. He had tried not to attract attention, but that was pointless.

As far as the company Wynn had kept here at the guild, Chane had been a curiosity and Shade more so. But Osha’s height, eyes, and more deeply tan skin and whiter blond hair than a typical Lhoin’na—the elves of this continent—drew far more attention than he or Wynn would have desired. And more so if any gawker knew from where he had truly come.

Still, Wynn felt it was best to drag him out of his room for supper. If nothing else, he was less likely to start prodding her about their past, although she still had many questions about what had happened to him, about his changes, since she’d left him nearly two years ago.

A walk in the courtyard would do him good as well. Together the three of them left the hall and made their way down the passage to the entry alcove. Just as they reached it, one of the huge main doors swung open.

Chane walked in, appearing openly relieved at the sight of her. Then he glowered briefly at Osha.

Wynn didn’t have time for the “boys” and their mutual distaste.

“Something happened?” she asked in alarm.

Chane looked both ways, and his gaze settled on the door of a nearby seminar room. “In there,” he rasped before walking over.

“Chane, no!” she whispered loudly. The room would be empty at this time, but Wynn did not like the idea of a premin or domin coming along and catching them talking.

“Hurry,” he insisted.

With her mouth pursed, she followed him in, and perhaps if Shade hadn’t been the last one to enter, Chane might have shut the door in Osha’s face.

Wynn pulled out her small cold-lamp crystal, swiped it hard down her robe for the heat of friction, and the crystal ignited with dull light. The small room was empty but for rows of wooden benches all facing two chairs and a single lectern at the back wall.

“What is wrong?” she whispered.

Chane glanced sidelong, just once, at Osha—who glared back—before he said, “Ore-Locks visited me only moments ago.”

At that Wynn fell silent and let Chane speak. Ore-Locks wouldn’t come here unless it was important. But as Chane recounted the story he’d heard from the dwarf, Wynn’s stomach began growing tighter and tighter.

That someone ... someone else ... had breached the dwarven underworld seemed impossible. That this someone had gone straight for the wall through which Wynn had been dragged to the ancient texts a season ago was even worse. When Chane assured her that the orb Ore-Locks held in custody was safe, that wasn’t quite enough to quell her fear.

Someone had somehow still known where to look for that orb and gone straight to that wall, even though only a stonewalker could reach the tiny pocket in the mountain that held the texts and the orb of Earth.

“The invader was briefly seen,” Chane added.

Panic took hold of Wynn again when Chane described the would-be thief.

“Ore-Locks is certain?” she managed to ask. “That’s what he saw?”

Osha and Shade were both quiet through this exchange, but Shade was watching Chane, and Osha was watching Wynn.

“Yes,” Chane answered, “though he only caught a glimpse of the invader with his own eyes. Others of his caste described someone attired too much like the messenger who brought letters for Nikolas and Premin Hawes.”

Wynn stood there trying to breathe.

“How far Dhredze Seatt?” Osha asked in Belaskian. “Enough time?”

That was exactly what was on Wynn’s mind. If the messenger and the would-be thief were the same person, then even if a ship had been prearranged and waiting ...

“I do not think so,” Chane said. “There was not enough time to make the journey to the seatt, let alone breach the underworld, from when the letters were delivered.”

Perhaps the thief and messenger were not connected at all, and their similar appearances were a coincidence. After the past two years, and all that had happened surrounding the orbs, Wynn did not believe in coincidences.

A greater fear flooded her.

Only Sau’ilahk, the wraith, knew that the dwarven underworld was involved with the texts. Only he might guess at where an orb could be hidden, considering that Ore-Locks had been seen with her and Chane when they’d gone to Bäalâle Seatt. Sau’ilahk had even invaded the dwarven underworld in following Wynn there before she’d learned of that lost dwarven city.

The Stonewalkers had cast out Sau’ilahk, or at least they first thought he had been finished off. But what if it wasn’t the wraith but some other new minion? Sau’ilahk had been—was—a conjuror whose skills and power had grown over a thousand years.

Or ...

Was another faction who served the Ancient Enemy now on the move, somehow having gained clues in trying to seek out orbs on this continent?

Either way, someone had brought Nikolas a message from his father, who in turn had requested texts on folklore going back as far as possible to the Forgotten History.

“I have to speak to Premin Hawes,” she said quietly. “Now.”

Down in Premin Hawes’s study, Wynn rambled out the entire story, the interloper and messenger descriptions, and all of her hypotheses while barely taking a breath. Shade stood listening at her side and for once wasn’t causing trouble or sniffing in corners where she shouldn’t.

Hawes sat in the corner armchair and listened with her typical cold expression, which could unnerve anyone. But when Wynn finished and finally sucked a breath, she was already too frantic to be affected by the premin’s chilling stare.

“What do you think?” she asked. “What should we do?”

Premin Hawes didn’t answer. Her gray-hazel eyes shifted, looking here and there but not at anything specific, at least as far as Wynn could tell.

“Domin High-Tower approved Nikolas’s leave of absence, along with funding,” she finally said. “Nikolas sails the day after tomorrow for the small port of Oléron on the southern end of Witeny’s coast. From there he can arrange transport by land to the duchy.”