The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Read online

  Praise for the books of

  Harry Connolly

  The three novels of The Great Way

  The Way Into Chaos

  The Way Into Magic

  The Way Into Darkness

  "Connolly pens one hell of a gripping tale and kicks Epic Fantasy in the head! Heroic in scope, but intimately human, and richly detailed. The Way Into Chaos intrigues and teases, then grabs readers by the throat and plunges them into desperate adventure related through the experience of two extraordinary narrators. The story never lets up as it twists and turns to a breathless finish that leaves you crying for the next book of The Great Way. Fantastic!"

  -- Kat Richarson

  "One hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners, breathtaking holy moly of a book."

  -- C.E. Murphy

  "Complex world, tight action, awesome women as well as men; Connolly was good right out the gate, and just keeps getting better."

  -- Sherwood Smith

  Twenty Palaces

  "Connolly’s portrayal of magic — and the hints he drops about the larger supernatural world—are as exciting as ever."

  -- Black Gate

  Child of Fire

  “[Child of Fire] is excellent reading and has a lot of things I love in a book: a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you’ll get something in your eye just reading it, and a gorgeously flawed protagonist. Take this one to the checkout counter. Seriously.”

  -- Jim Butcher

  "Unique magical concepts, a tough and pragmatic protagonist and a high casualty rate for innocent bystanders will enthrall readers who like explosive action and magic that comes at a serious cost."

  -- Starred review from Publishers Weekly, and one of PW's Best 100 Books of 2009

  "One of the few urban magic books — for lack of a better term — novels I enjoyed last year was Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire. And I loved it.”

  -- John Rogers, writer/producer THE LIBRARIANS

  “Every page better than the last. Cinematic and vivid, with a provocative glimpse into a larger world.”

  -- Terry Rossio, screenwriter (SHREK, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN)

  Game of Cages

  "Game of Cages is a tough, smart, unflinching urban fantasy novel."

  -- Andrew Wheeler

  "This has become one of my must read series."

  -- Carolyn Cushman, Locus Magazine

  Circle of Enemies

  “An edge-of-the-seat read! Ray Lilly is the new high-water mark of paranormal noir.”

  -- Charles Stross

  “Ray Lilly is one of the most interesting characters I’ve read lately, and Harry Connolly’s vision is amazing."

  -- Charlaine Harris

  Spirit of the Century Presents: King Khan

  An exuberant romp that distills all the best of pulp fiction adventure into one single ludicrously entertaining masterpiece.

  -- Ryk E. Spoor

  Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

  Connolly writes tales of magic and mystery in more modern times incredibly well. His work reminds me a lot of Tim Powers or Neil Gaiman. I highly recommend this collection.

  -- Jason Weisberger at Boing Boing

  ALSO BY HARRY CONNOLLY

  The Way Into Chaos, Book One of The Great Way

  The Way Into Darkness, Book Three of The Great Way

  Twenty Palaces

  Child of Fire

  Game of Cages

  Circle of Enemies

  Spirit of the Century Presents: King Khan

  Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

  A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark

  THE WAY INTO

  MAGIC

  Book Two of The Great Way

  Harry Connolly

  Interior art by Claudia Cangini

  Map illustration by Priscilla Spencer

  Cover art by Chris McGrath

  Cover design by Bradford Foltz

  Book design by The Barbarienne’s Den

  Copy edited by Richard Shealy

  Copyright © 2014 Harry Connolly

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 098982845X

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9898284-5-1

  For Roger Zelazny, my favorite author during my teenage years.

  THE WAY INTO MAGIC

  Book Two of The Great Way

  Chapter 1

  Cazia Freewell needed several days to adjust to the presence of a second mind inside her own. She still hadn’t seen the Tilkilit queen—even though she’d been close enough to spit on it…her…it—but her thoughts were constantly under watch. Whenever Cazia thought about freedom, home, escape, her Gifts, the weapons the Tilkilit warriors carried, or even how ugly the creatures were, the queen sent a wave of disapproval so powerful that it was indistinguishable from self-loathing.

  At first Cazia stubbornly fought, just as she’d always fought. The queen was an Enemy, and while she had retreated from many of the Enemies she’d grown up with, she had never stopped resisting.

  Except that retreat from the queen was impossible. It had invaded her thoughts just as the Tilkilit had invaded her homeland of Kal-Maddum. The creature was listening to her thoughts, and whether Cazia was down in the lightless tunnels or out in the thick, mist-shrouded forests of the valley floor, she could not escape.

  And she hated it. Cazia may have been young, but she’d had a lifetime of practice nursing her resentments; unfortunately, this time she could not hide her feelings behind a stoic expression. She could not retreat to the solitude of her room. She could not do anything but endure the presence of an Enemy’s thoughts inside her own. Worse, the queen’s thoughts and hers were so mingled that Cazia sometimes struggled to separate the queen’s opinion of her from her opinion of herself. It was almost like going hollow again, expect without the increase in magical power and insight.

  She hated that creature more than she had ever hated anyone in her life.

  “I am a free human being,” Vilavivianna had whispered to her one morning, perhaps twenty days after they’d been captured. They were sitting together in the mist-shrouded meadow the Tilkilit had claimed as their own. There were steep mountains to the west and south, and ocean far to the east, but she had not seen them in many days. The Tilkilit swarmed in the lowest dry spot in the Qorr Valley, hiding in the trees and the never-ending fog.

  “I am a free human being,” Ivy said again. “I am no one’s property.” The little Indregai princess looked pale and exhausted; she had been fighting against the queen’s mental control as hard as Cazia had. They clasped hands and repeated the words together. “I am a free human being.”

  The creature’s counterattack was so furious, it overwhelmed them. Their minds went blank and they fainted into the grass.

  They woke together, almost as though the queen allowed it. Before Cazia could even remember where she was, a Tilkilit warrior pressed one of their strange smooth stones against her hand. She felt her magic being drawn out of her. Again. Every day, they did this to her.

  But she didn’t dare resist. Each of the Tilkilit were about the size of the princess, who was only twelve years old, but they were tremendously strong and well armed. They could throw stones with the power of a man with a sling, and had already taken down Kinz, the third member of their expedition. She had been taken away; hopefully, the Tilkilit were repairing her injuries, but a small part of Cazia’s mind was convinced that she’d already been eaten.

  Poor little Ivy looked miserable. Cazia shouldn’t have let her come with her over the mountains.

  The earth rumbled. One of th
e Tilkilit’s worms was passing nearby, but thankfully, it was deep below ground. Cazia most definitely did not want to look at one of them ever again. The creatures were colossal, large enough to shatter the gates of the Palace of Song and Morning simply by laying the weight of a front end against them, and Cazia had seen the Tilkilit riding them into battle.

  Cazia had helped Vilavivianna destroy one, and the memory—just a fleeting image of the beast writhing and burning—brought on a flood of recrimination that she was certain was not her own. Fairly certain.

  The rumbling shook the branches of a nearby tree. Cazia realized she’d never seen one like it before: the bark was like tin, and the blossoms it bore were as white as fair-weather clouds, with shiny metallic tips.

  She scowled at it. This plant was not native to Kal-Maddum. It was another invader in the Qorr Valley, just like the Tilkilit.

  Only a few days’ journey from this spot, a portal to other lands sat open, allowing anyone or anything to pass through in either direction. The connection at this end was constant and unwavering, but the other side changed to a new location every ten days. Anyone and anything might pass through, and did. Some invaders were Enemies, like the insect queen that had declared that Cazia was her property, or the gigantic eagles that soared above the mists overhead. Some were the seeds of harmless plants like...

  Then she noticed a ring of bare earth around the base of the tree, and brown grass at the edge of that. Apparently, this tree was poisonous to native life.

  A powerful wave of revulsion ran through Cazia. That portal needed to be closed or destroyed in some way, so that no more horrors like the poison tree or the Tilkilit queen could invade her Kal-Maddum. Her home.

  The queen knew her thoughts instantly and overwhelmed her again, driving her unconscious.

  It continued that way, day after day. The warriors used their anti-magic stones to deny Cazia the use of the Gifts. The queen monitored their every thought and made them regret even the most casual thoughts of discontent. After fifteen more days, Kinz was permitted to rejoin them. Vilavivianna leaped at the older girl to hug her, but Kinz did not seem to mind. After the princess released her, she rotated her shoulders and declared herself completely healed. Her time inside a Tilkilit cocoon had repaired her broken bones as if she had never been injured.

  “I’m glad they didn’t eat you,” Cazia said.

  “I am made glad, too. What has been happening?” Kinz asked. They sat in a little circle. The mists were thick that day, but the girls could not even pretend they could talk in secret. Tilkilit warriors moved at the edge of the clearing, just within sight, and the queen never seemed to sleep.

  “Nothing,” Vilavivianna answered. “They keep us prisoner here in the forest, moving us only when the mists become so thin that they fear one of the Great Terror will attack from above.” The Great Terror was the Tilkilit name for the gigantic eagles that nested in the cliffs above and hunted them ruthlessly. “We are not even allowed to relieve ourselves in private.”

  “It is not like they make to peek, Ivy,” Kinz said. Her voice was thick with exhaustion. The three of them glanced up as a nearby warrior passed close by. Its reddish-black, hard-shelled body was as narrow as a man’s thigh, and its tiny eyes were sinister and opaque. It wore nothing more than a green sash—apparently a signifier of rank—and carried a short spear, pouch of stones, and tiny mace it carried in lieu of a dagger.

  The Tilkilit could leap surprising distances and were deceptively strong. Cazia knew she and her two companions could escape from the Tilkilit if they could get a decent head start; while the warriors were quick, they had no endurance. Unfortunately, the Tilkilit knew that, too.

  “They are careful,” the princess said. “And they are waiting for something.”

  Cazia tore a few blades of grass out of the dirt and threw them back down. “They’re waiting for us to surrender.”

  Kinz looked at them both. “Do they know everything? Ivy?”

  Vilavivianna lowered her eyes. “They do. The Alliance, the five peoples, the serpents, the giant eagles, and...and the tunnel Cazia dug to bring us over the mountains.”

  “They also know the tunnel is blocked,” Cazia said, “although I doubt it worries them much. I think the only reason they haven’t already scaled the mountains on this side and started down the tunnel is that we can’t really remember where it is.”

  “No,” Ivy said decisively. “They will not climb above the mists, not with the birds circling above us. It would be a slaughter. And what would the queen do? Set up the holdfast here in Qorr? No, they want another way out.”

  Cazia felt herself flush. Of course they wouldn’t expose themselves to the birds. What’s more, their riding beasts could never escape over the mountains. They were simply too huge.

  The queen was getting the better of her. The thing was inside her head, listening to her every thought, and she had no space to plan a counter attack.

  Cazia ran her fingers across the stiff, broken grass beneath her. Did the queen know where she was at every moment? Certainly not, or they wouldn’t be watched so closely, even when they went behind a tree to relieve themselves. Could the queen see out of her eyes or hear what she heard?

  If so, she must have been as bored as Cazia was, spending day after day in this meadow, with nothing to look at but the same few trees and the white mist, which never completely cleared even during the warmest hours. It was one of the few aboveground places where the Tilkilit could hide. Worse, late at night, when the wind blew strongly out of the east, Cazia could hear the terrifying sound of crashing surf.

  Ivy sniffled. “I miss home,” she said. In that moment, the princess looked like the little girl that she was, although Cazia was just three years her elder, and Kinz two or three older than that. “I hate sleeping on the wet grass. The food they give us is disgusting and I am always thirsty. Why can they not let us relieve ourselves in private!”

  “Little sister,” Cazia said, but Ivy didn’t want comfort. She stood and stamped off into the mists. Warriors followed her. Warriors followed all of them.

  Kinz’s expression was pinched and unreadable. The Tilkilit queen might have been able to read the older girl’s thoughts, but Cazia couldn’t.

  They both glanced at Ivy. While she was the youngest, the princess had been raised with private tutors who had taught her about the wider world. She spoke several languages and had negotiated for the supplies they needed for this trip. Kinz was mostly good for catching fish and carrying their packs. Cazia herself had merely blundered along, misusing her magic until she had driven herself to madness. It was Ivy who had saved their lives, more than once, with her common sense.

  I should never have let her come along.

  ::You are my property.:: The Tilkilit queen’s “voice” was loud and sharp in her mind. Cazia felt a sudden revulsion at the intruding thoughts. The creature hadn’t used language since that first meeting. ::You are my property. You will accept this. As I obey the voice of the god in the air, you will do as I command. If you do not, I will take away your little sister.::

  A white-hot fury run through Cazia. She hated everything about those oily, red-sharp thoughts. The queen’s mind was flat and hurried and utterly alien to her own. And she’d just been stupid enough to threaten Ivy.

  If she’d still had her magic, Cazia would have started burning every Tilkilit in sight, and Fire could take the consequences.

  If you do anything to hurt that little girl, if you or your people put so much as a bruise on her, I will kill myself and leave you stranded here.

  Cazia could feel the creature’s shock. She could feel the way it grappled with the concept of suicide as though it was a new and unimaginable idea. Risking death it understood, but ending life voluntarily?

  Clearly, the queen wanted to dismiss the idea as an empty threat, so Cazia recalled the few suicides she’d known in her life in the palace--two servants who had hung themselves, a guard who had fallen on his sword, a young scholar
who leaped from the top of the tower. The queen was right there in her thoughts and understood that this was truly something her kind did.

  Confusion flooded them both. Cazia was as alien to the queen as it was to her.

  A wave of censure washed over her, and the queen’s anger was so intense that Cazia blacked out.

  The scream of an eagle woke her in the middle of the night. The fog was so dense that it blocked out all starlight and she could not see her own hand when she held it up to her face.

  However, she could hear the beating of huge wings and the panicked clicking of the Tilkilit warriors. There was another piercing scream, and she heard the Great Terror flapping away. Kinz and Ivy grabbed hold of her and they clutched each other in the darkness, waiting for silence to return.

  Kinz led them toward the trees. Cazia crawled after them, trying to be as quiet as possible. There was no way the giant eagle had targeted its prey by sight; it had to have located it by sound. Once they found a narrow space between two large trees, they wrapped their arms around each other again, and they did not shiver from the chill wet air alone.

  The Tilkilit queen wanted a tunnel. Cazia wasn’t just supposed to surrender to the queen’s authority; she was still alive because the queen wanted her to dig a tunnel through the Northern Barrier that was large enough for the giant worms. The Tilkilit would have passage into the rest of the continent while the queen… Could she be moved? She lived in utter darkness; the one time Cazia had been near her, she could not see anything but she had the unmistakable sense of hugeness and immobility. Maybe the queen wanted to rule from her burrow in Qorr, or maybe she planned to create a second queen to make the trip into the Sweeps.