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.