Барб Хенди - Between Their Worlds

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—”