Wynn pocketed her crystal before rushing out into the dark passage. Ore-Locks pushed past her, and this time she didn’t argue. There was little to see in the dark except the dim glow of the entrance’s cold lamp, hidden from view.
“The shout came from up there,” Ore-Locks whispered.
Wynn barely made out his chin jutting northward along the main passage.
“We have to find Chane quickly,” she whispered back, “before he—”
Ore-Locks leveled his iron staff, and Wynn backed up. She had to duck left as he suddenly twisted the staff into a swing before grabbing it with his other hand. She heard a sharp clang of steel against the staff’s iron.
Wynn caught a glimpse of a dark figure stumbling into the passage wall beyond Ore-Locks. Almost instantly, a taller figure rushed forward out of the darkness at the dwarf. She didn’t have time to moan as she dug for her crystal. If these were guards, hopefully Ore-Locks could knock them unconscious without serious harm.
As the iron staff recoiled from the first strike, Ore-Locks arced it straight down in the tall one’s path. That one hopped into a midair crouch that made Wynn’s eyes widen. The staff struck where its feet had been.
Small bits of stone went flying from the impact, but Wynn’s gaze was still fixed on the tall form appearing to hover for an instant in the air. He was just too tall to have moved so quickly, and between wraps of black cloth covering his lower face and hair were large amber eyes. One of those eyes glowed out through a set of four parallel scars.
Wynn recognized his half-hidden face.
The front end of Ore-Locks’s iron staff recoiled off the floor. He turned its momentum sideways across the passage, and Wynn had to duck the staff’s back end once more.
The staff struck the left wall. Like a controlled ricochet in Ore-Locks’s great hands, its tip bounced off, arcing back across the passage, and then down at the first figure trying to push off the right wall.
“Valhachkasej’â!” that one snarled, raising his arms to block at the last instant.
Wynn saw two white metal winged blades on his arms.
“Ah no!” she breathed.
The staff struck the blades and slammed Leesil into the passage wall.
“No ... no! No!” Wynn cried.
She tried to grab Ore-Locks, but he swung the staff back at Brot’an. Wynn ducked the staff’s butt again, and when it passed, she threw herself atop Ore-Locks’s broad back, trying to grip with her legs as she fumbled to cover his eyes with her hands.
“Stop!” Wynn shouted. “Everyone ... stop it now!”
Rodian was still calculating which guards to move where when Lúcan had reappeared out of the northeast storage building. Since that ugly night, when the young corporal had been left so marred, he rarely expressed any open emotion. Now his hair was disheveled and his tabard was slightly askew, as if he’d been running. He looked distraught.
Rodian trotted across the courtyard, meeting Lúcan halfway.
“What’s happened?” he asked, slowing to a stop.
“The premin is gone!”
“What? How?”
“I showed her into the study and shut the door. Then one of those other handleless iron doors down there opened. Two dark-robed sages took one look at me, glanced at the premin’s door, and then ducked back inside before I could question them. Something wasn’t right, and I opened the study door to check on the premin. She wasn’t there anymore.”
Lúcan shook his head, dropping his gaze.
“I don’t know how, sir,” he continued. “Believe me, she couldn’t have snuck by me, and there’s no other way out of there.”
Rodian wasn’t going to blame his corporal, and he guessed that someone like Hawes was in little danger on her own. But he wanted to throw up his hands in frustration.
May the Blessed Trinity of Sentience take pity on him—just once—trapped again among sages!
“Watch the portcullis,” he ordered Lúcan. “I’ll handle this.”
Finding Hawes was unlikely, though he wondered where she’d gone and how. The premin had been doing something inside the main building, besides a faked search for a nonexistent initiate.
Rodian strode off for the keep’s main doors.
Wynn saw Brot’an freeze to stare back at her.
“Get off me,” Ore-Locks growled.
She looked at Leesil and then Brot’an again as the tall elder elf pulled down his face wrap. It was the only time Wynn could remember seeing the master anmaglâhk astonished, at least as much as she was.
“What are you doing here?” she breathed in shock. “Leesil, what’s going on?
Ore-Locks pulled her hands off his eyes. “You know these two?”
Leesil righted himself, wobbling. He shook out one arm and rolled a shoulder. When he jerked his face wrap down, Wynn melted in relief at the sight of his familiar features.
“Will you get off ... now?” Ore-Locks repeated.
Wynn slid off Ore-Locks’s back and ducked around him, and then her relief wavered. “Leesil?”
He didn’t make an inappropriate joke or come to give her a quick hug. He didn’t even look at Ore-Locks after being slammed against the wall twice.
Leesil stood there, eyeing her coldly.
Wynn’s stomach knotted up again. Something was terribly wrong.
He stepped toward her, making Ore-Locks tense up, and then passed right by her. He headed down the passage, away from the main doors.
“Come on,” he said without looking back.
“But Leesil—” Wynn began.
“Now!” he snapped, never breaking stride.
“Who are these two?” Ore-Locks demanded.
“Friends come to free her,” Brot’an answered. “As have you, it appears. Introductions can wait.”
Brot’an tucked his stilettos back up his sleeves and waved Wynn after Leesil, who’d paused halfway down the passage but hadn’t looked back.
Wynn’s thoughts cleared enough to race in another direction. Chane had to be in trouble, and she turned to Ore-Locks.
“I’m safe with these two, so you need to—”
“What? No! I will not just leave you with—”
“Yes, you will,” she cut in. “You have to go find him ... help him!”
Ore-Locks’s glare drifted from her to Brot’an and back again. Then they all heard a door handle ratchet up near the entryway up the passage.
Brot’an snatched Wynn by the arm and dragged her after Leesil. When Ore-Locks tried to intervene, Wynn waved him off.
“I’m safe,” she whispered. “Now find him and get him out of here!”
She tried to look back and see if Ore-Locks did as she asked, but she kept stumbling as Brot’an dragged her in his longer strides. They rounded the corner toward the library’s southernmost entrance, and Ore-Locks was gone from sight.
Wynn pulled away from Brot’an and ran after Leesil. When she caught up, he kept on. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence until they reached the first door to the library—which was open. With barely a glance, Leesil grabbed Wynn’s wrist and pulled her after him down that narrower passage to the second door.
Wynn had no idea how he knew where to go, and his grip was too tight. What could she possibly have done to make him so angry?
This no longer felt like a rescue.
Rodian stepped through the keep’s main doors into the entryway and heard a distant, faint shout. He thought it was Jonah’s voice, and then pounding footfalls carried faintly from somewhere up the main passage’s northern half. As he was about to head off that way, something caught his eye.
He pivoted in the other direction and peered down the passage’s southern half. Had he seen a glimmer of light down there? Had something moved in the dark between him and that brief glow?