The Way Into Darkness: Book Three 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 Magic, Book Two 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

  DARKNESS

  Book Three 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: 0989828476

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9898284-7-5

  For J.R.R. Tolkien. I owe him a great debt.

  THE WAY INTO DARKNESS

  Book Three of The Great Way

  Chapter 1

  The Great Hall of Tyr Iskol Twofin was not particularly great, but it was large enough for an execution. Tejohn was dragged inside with his hands bound behind his back. Rope. Not chains. Chains were expensive. Tejohn, for his part, did not to try his strength against his bonds.

  If the Twofins were as small a holding as they seemed, he would have to be very careful. Few enemies were as quick to violence as a weak one determined to appear strong.

  Tejohn kept his mouth shut as he was brought before the Twofin chair. Sunlight shone through the open doors of a large balcony, and with it came the smell of seawater. A small fire burned in the hearth, but the oil lamps hanging from the rough lumber beams were unlit.

  “What have you done to us?” Granny Nin cried. She, too, had been bound and brought into the hall, although the rest of her merchant troupe had been left out in the courtyard, guarded by a ring of anxious-looking boy soldiers. She was close enough to Javien that he flinched every time she shouted at him. “What have you done? We’re respectable merchants from honorable families. I’m Third Festival myself, and not one of my people is more recent than Eighth! Are you even a real priest?”

  That brought a response. “Of course I am!” Javien shouted. The squeak in his voice betrayed his fear, but she had given him a reason to be offended and he used it as an excuse to assert himself. “I am a Beacon of the Great Way, leading the people of Kal-Maddum on the true path, and I will not be spoken to like a common cutpurse!”

  “I don’t believe you!” Granny cried. “My good friend Iskol would never treat us this way. You must have murdered the real beacon and taken his robes!”

  Javien shut his eyes and bared his teeth, but he kept silent. “Monument sustain me.”

  “Song knows,” Granny cried out, “that I did nothing wrong. I was tricked!” She entreated the bureaucrat who had greeted her so warmly outside. It occurred to Tejohn that she had not once said the man’s name. Perhaps she didn’t remember it.

  It didn’t matter. The bureaucrat said nothing. He simply stood in the corner of the hall and watched the three of them with a pinched face. Tejohn looked around the room and saw it slowly filling up. More guards appeared, followed by a man in a cuirass that probably fit him when he was young and healthy, but now hung over him like the shell of a turtle.

  A trio of women entered the room, covering their mouths with their long sleeves as they whispered to each other. Others were obviously merchants; it was common in the smaller holdfasts for merchants to have substantial influence with the tyr; the smaller lands relied more on trade with the outside world more than, say, a Finstel or a Gerrit. Tejohn wasn’t sure if the merchants were hoping to loot the caravan or if they feared they might receive the same treatment someday. Their expressions were too stoic to read.

  Granny Nin slumped to the side, falling on her hip. Tejohn didn’t blame her; the wooden floor was hard against his kneecaps, but he didn’t want to be lying down if he could help it, not when the tyr finally decided to make his appearance. Bad enough to be kneeling.

  Doctor Twofin himself was nowhere to be seen.

  Tejohn cursed himself for his stupidity. He’d known that Doctor Twofin was brother to the tyr of a mino
r mountain holdfast, but he hadn’t been clear on where it was. And he had seen the banner out on the walls perhaps once in his life, during the prince’s tour of the empire. Doctor Twofin himself never wore it, of course. As a soldier, Tejohn was proud to wear the insignia of his homeland, but scholars were not permitted to retain their old loyalties. They swore oaths to the Italga family and the Scholars’ Tower.

  Maybe he should have recognized those two sea serpent humps with the fins on them. Maybe not. It didn’t matter now. All he could do was wait for the local tyr to made his dramatic entrance.

  Iskol Twofin, tyr of the Twofin lands, was very like Doctor Twofin in appearance, although he looked ten years older. His hair was thin and white, his face haggard, and his eyes a little wild, as though he had been told a wild animal waited for him.

  Still, his robes were green and trimmed with white, unlike the miserable blacks of the Finstels, which gave him a sprightly air. “Well!” he cried as he swept across the room, doing his best to sound confident and hearty. Tejohn thought there was a touch of strain in his voice. “Nin, it is always so good to see you, but I’m told you have brought, er, unusual guests with you this time.”

  “My tyr,” Granny Nin said, forcing herself back to her knees. “You know the love I bear you and your people. I’m not sure why you have treated me this way, as if I’m a common criminal? I have brought with me a beacon of the temple in Ussmajil. At least, that is who he told me he was.”

  She sounded almost as strained as he did. “Indeed? Did he perform services for you? Forging marriages? Dissolving them? Blessing the newly dead and the newly born?”

  “He did, my tyr.”

  “And did he know the proper rites?”

  “He did, my tyr,” Granny said earnestly. She seemed to be gaining confidence that she would convince her “good friend” that she meant no harm after all. “He knew every rite and seemed a pious and gentle man.”

  “Hmm.” Tyr Twofin settled himself into his chair. Tejohn looked around the room again for Doctor Twofin, but he was still nowhere to be--

  There he was, suddenly, standing behind the tyr’s chair on the left side. Tejohn was startled and alarmed for a moment. Hollowed-out scholars, left to their own devices, became wizards. They developed strange and dangerous spells of their own and used them without regard for oaths of loyalty, respect for others, or even the bonds of familial love. What lunatic would allow one so close to a tyr? Was the man invisible to everyone but him?

  “So,” the tyr said, after a long pause that was supposed to suggest he was being thoughtful. Iskol Twofin was not much for playacting. “You checked the beacon carefully and made sure that he was exactly who he claimed to be.”

  “I did, my tyr,” Granny Nin said. “Most carefully.”

  “But what about his bodyguard? Did you check him out as well?”

  Granny was stymied by that question. She looked at Tejohn with alarm and confusion, as though she had never even thought to worry about him.

  “It’s not her fault,” Tejohn said. “I told her my name was Ondel Ulstrik.”

  Tyr Twofin gave him the same blank look the hollowed-out scholar did. “If he speaks without my permission again, cut out his tongue. I don’t care who he is.”

  Fire take it all, Tejohn shut his mouth. He should have known better than to try to help Granny Nin or anyone else in a situation like this. Let her talk herself out of danger. She’d probably done it often enough.

  “Who?” she called. “Who? Who? What has he done? Who is he?”

  “You don’t know?” Tyr Twofin said, a sickly smile on his face. “That’s Tyr Tejohn Treygar, hero of Pinch Hall, helpmeet to King Ellifer Italga, sword- and spearmaster to the prince.”

  Granny Nin looked at him in shock. He half expected her to be horrified, but instead, she looked at him as if he was a foreign coin. She had no idea what to do with him and whether he was worth keeping. “I had no idea. Do you think him a spy, my tyr?”

  “I believe him to be an assassin,” Tyr Twofin said calmly. “I believe he’s come to murder my own brother and me as well, if he gets the chance.”

  Tejohn knew a taunt when he heard one but he hadn’t forgotten that the tyr had promised to cut out his tongue. He kept quiet, although he couldn’t keep his expression stoic.

  Tyr Twofin grinned and leaned forward in his chair. “Don’t like that, do you? You don’t like that we Twofins, of a small and largely forgotten holdfast, could see right through you. Your palace games will impress no one here. I’ll have the truth out of you before the turn of the moon, my tyr, and you will tell me gladly. Then I will know when the Italga troops will be coming, who will be leading them, and where we can find Amlian Italga herself!”

  Paranoid. The man had gone mad.

  “King Shunzik” Finstel had called Tejohn an assassin, too, but he had reason to fear his enemies. He was surrounded by them on all sides—in fact, his western borders were already suffering Bendertuk raids.

  But the Twofin walls had not been marked by blood or fire. No one had come to break down those gates. Who would bother? Even the pass they commanded into the Sweeps was little used; Durdric fighters and alligaunts haunted this westernmost end, and the land was too swampy for the herding clans. Granny Nin and her tiny convoy might have been the largest caravan the Twofin people could expect to see.

  They were a backwater and always had been. Poor Iskol Twofin, how that must have galled him.

  “Well?” the old tyr shouted. “Aren’t you even going to deny it?”

  Tejohn cleared his throat. “With your kind permission to speak, my tyr.”

  Tyr Twofin’s eyes grew wide with anger, but he kept it in check. Doctor Twofin, still standing at his side, stared at Tejohn with all the warm comfort of a hungry owl. “You have it,” the old man said.

  “I have sworn an oath of loyalty to Ellifer and Amlian Italga. If they are alive and active, I would be grateful if you would tell me where they are. I should return to them immediately.”

  “Pshht,” the old tyr said with a wave of his hand. He didn’t looked surprised by Tejohn’s response, but he didn’t look particularly troubled, either. “We’ve all heard the stories. We know that Amlian and Ellifer escaped the carnage of that first day of Festival in the Palace of Song and Morning. We know this because Queen Amlian had mastered a spell the entire empire thought lost: the Eighth Gift of the Evening People. We know they withdrew with nineteen hundred spears and four hundred bows to a secret holdfast in the east.”

  Tejohn couldn’t resist asking, “Who told you all this?”

  “Travelers,” the old tyr said with satisfaction. “Travelers passing through the gates of our city. We have spoken to dozens of them, people who knew nothing of each other, who had no chance to conspire before they came here, and they all tell similar stories. The king and queen of Peradain are alive, and they’re using the grunts to clear out the lands of their most troublesome peoples.”

  “I know you will not believe me,” Tejohn said, “but those stories are false.”

  “Hah! We have heard it multiple times! From many sources!”

  Javien cleared his throat. “If I may speak, my tyr.” Tyr Twofin did not bother to answer, just nodded and waved at him to give him permission. “We have heard such stories as well. The common folk are spreading them from town to town, caravan to caravan. Rumors always spread in times of war. There’s no way to stop it.”

  “Baseless rumors, eh? Common folk telling each other the same tall tales. Is that what you’d have me believe? I guess you would know better.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Tejohn said. “I would. As I’m sure your brother told you, I was there, in Peradain, on the first day of the Festival. I saw the gate open. I saw the grunts come through. I saw Queen Amlian Italga die.”

  A murmur went through the crowd at that, which Tyr Twofin did his best to ignore. Doctor Twofin still showed no sign that anything they were saying mattered to him in the slightest. Tejohn tried to see if his
cheeks were wet with tears, but there was not enough light.

  “And yet,” Tyr Twofin said, “if your beloved king and queen had sent you out into the world to spread that story, you would do so happily. You would look me in the eye and say anything they had commanded you. Would you not?”

  “I would do whatever the king and queen asked of me, if it was within my power.”

  “See!” The old tyr lunged out of his chair and advanced on Tejohn, his face flushed. He seemed to think he had scored a debating point. “You admit that you would lie to me!”

  “If the king had commanded it, of course I would. I swore myself to his service.” Tejohn had given up hope of convincing the tyr to spare his life. Now he spoke to impress the others standing in the room in the hopes one or more would intercede on their behalf. All he had to do was convince them he was valuable. “The king made no such command. He was at the fore of the battle from the moment it was joined. I did not see him die, but he was lost in the confusion of battle.”

  “And yet, we hear persistent rumors that the queen spirited the king away, using the Eighth Gift.”

  Tejohn tried to recall which spell was the eighth. Had he ever heard Doctor Twofin or one of the other scholars in the palace talk about it? “I don’t know that spell.”