The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 2

  Not that it mattered. Cazia had no intention of--

  She blacked out again.

  It was not quite dawn when she came around again. The same night? At first, she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t feel thirsty enough to have missed a whole day.

  “Are you well, big sister?”

  Ivy’s hand was cool against the side of her face. Cazia sat up and clutched at her head. She’d had worse headaches in her life, but she wasn’t sure if the queen had caused it or if she was merely parched. “I’m thirsty.”

  “Take this.” Ivy pressed a bowl of water into her hands. The Tilkilit drank from wooden bowls, for some reason. “They brought us double rations of water today. Perhaps they’re not trying to kill us after all.”

  “I’ll believe that when they set us free.”

  She drank deeply from the bowl, gulping the chilly, slightly salty water. Great Way, but it felt good to wet her throat. Then she noticed two more in the grass beside her and gulped them both down greedily. It wasn’t enough, but she felt better.

  Kinz approached them with a pair of apricots. She handed both to Cazia. “We have eaten.”

  “Kinz,” Ivy said. She laid her hand on the older girl’s shoulder. “Kinz.”

  Cazia noticed the servant’s face was pale, and there were dark, puffy circles beneath her eyes. “Kinz,” she said with none of Ivy’s gentleness, “why have you been crying?”

  “I am not free,” she said. “The Poalos are no longer made free. Ever since I was old enough to run beside the herd, I have known the day might come when I would make to lose my freedom. The bad marriage. The sudden sickness. Grabbed in the night by slavers out of Indrega—”

  Ivy gasped. “My people are not slavers! How could you say such a thing!”

  Kinz gave her a withering look. “Raiding parties make from your lands to skulk into ours. My own cousin was taken when I was seven. She is probably still making to scrub pans in some minor chief’s kitchen, assuming she has not been whipped to death.” Ivy opened her mouth to protest, but Kinz cut her off. “You might have had all the best tutors, little princess, but there is still much you do not know.”

  At that, Ivy fell into a resentful silence. Kinz looked guiltily back at Cazia, as though she knew no one really wanted to hear her. She continued anyway. “But I always thought it would be soldiers out of Peradain. Whenever their spearmen and -women made to approach our camp to collect their tribute—”

  Taxes, Cazia thought automatically, but she kept her mouth shut. What did it matter now if the Poalos and other herding clans had been part of the Peradaini Empire? The empire was gone.

  “I was sure they would take us all away,” Kinz finished. “Turn us into servants.”

  “You are a servant,” Cazia blurted out. “You’re my servant, and Ivy’s, too. You swore service to us on the day we left the Ozzhuacks.”

  “I think the Queen of the Tilkilit has made to take my contract by force.”

  Cazia wouldn’t accept that, not when--a sudden bloom of censure began to crowd out her thoughts. It wasn’t enough to make her black out, though. The queen wanted them all as her servants.

  All they needed was a chance to put some distance between themselves and the warriors. Cazia didn’t know what it would be, but it had to come sometime, in some form.

  The queen’s censure grew stronger. Cazia saw spots before her eyes.

  “Has the queen stopped the attacks on you?” Ivy asked.

  Kinz shook her head. “It is not enough to make a surrender to her,” the girl said. “She wants us to love her, too.”

  It took all the willpower Cazia had not to bark out a derisive laugh. She held her anger and outrage inside, squeezing it down until it was as smooth and hard as an iron coin. Love? The Tilkilit? Did the queen understand anything about her?

  “She doesn’t just want us to surrender,” Cazia said. “She wants us to be part of her swarm...hive, whatever she calls it. And we can’t be part of her hive unless we are as devoted to her as her warriors are. Only then will she trust me enough to order me to dig a passage through the mountains into the Sweeps.”

  Kinz and Ivy stared at her, openmouthed. “A tunnel that lets her people out,” Ivy said, “would let The Blessing in. Has she not read our minds?”

  Kinz shook her head. “Do you think she believes us?”

  The question startled Cazia. Of course the queen believed them. The queen was a bug. She and her insect people thought bug thoughts; they were orderly and dense. While the queen could insert her thoughts into the minds of others, most of the complicated conversation that took place among the rest of her people was done by smell.

  The Tilkilit didn’t arrange discrete words into a long caravan of sounds that revealed meaning. They spurted out bursts of odor. It was very short and very complex, and if Cazia was any judge, it was not well suited for lying. Confusion bubbled through her thoughts, and of course, it belonged to the queen. Dishonesty seemed a more difficult concept for the Tilkilit mind than suicide was.

  But Cazia’s people--and it was only since she’d seen the city of Peradain fall to The Blessing that she had begun to think of the Peradaini as hers--were famous for their song, storytelling, and theater. What’s more, none of their performances were meant to be literal; everything was coded. Flooding stood in for the devastation of war. A man who risked all for some ambitious goal “built a tower too high.” A duel between two enemies was a bloody, punishing footrace.

  In fact, the spells Cazia had learned--the ones the Tilkilit’s anti-magic stones prevented her from casting--affected the physical world only. They couldn’t change a person’s mind or make them fall in love any more than the queen’s mental bullying. But art could. And the Tilkilit didn’t seem to make art.

  They don’t lie.

  “I love it here,” Cazia said suddenly. The other two girls stared at her in mute surprise. “I love everything about this and I’m so glad I don’t get to make my own decisions any more. If there’s anything a girl my age likes, it’s to have someone else tell her what she ought to be doing.”

  Kinz and Ivy glanced nervously at each other. “Cazia,” the little princess said, “is that you talking?”

  They don’t understand me, she thought. No, they do. They understand me perfectly.

  She turned directly toward Kinz. “How do you think your ugly brother is doing?” Just mentioning Alga made tingles run up Cazia’s back. The way that beautiful, arrogant jerk had smiled at her... “I can’t help but wonder how someone so physically repulsive is doing out in the world all alone.”

  Kinz blinked twice. “Yes. Yes, he is made very ugly. Humble, too. If only girls would make to show the interest in him, he might lose some of his humility.”

  “What are you both talking about?” Ivy asked, annoyed. “Alga was not ugly at all. I thought your brother was quite handsome.” This last was delivered to Kinz with an air of kindly reassurance.

  Cazia took Ivy’s hand. “I’m only sorry that we don’t have more meatbread for you. I know how much you liked it.” Ivy wrinkled her nose, but before she could complain yet again about how salty meatbread was, Cazia pushed on. “The Tilkilit queen is really powerful, don’t you think? She can obviously push her thoughts into all of her people’s minds at once.”

  “Yes,” Kinz agreed. “It was obvious that she knew when we made to capture one of her people, and that she had warned all those other soldiers where we were.”

  Ivy knitted her brows. “No, it wasn--”

  Cazia squeezed her hand. “If only The Blessing could be here. I miss having them close.”

  The little girl’s mouth made a little circle, then she looked back and forth between them. “Oh! Oh, yes, I wish The Blessing could be here, too, so I could ride the shoulders as we ran through the wilderness.”

  Once the princess understood what they were doing, she took to it like a flower to sunshine. She chattered endlessly about their conditions and the things she would rather be doing, all while
saying the exact opposite of how she felt.

  Cazia did her best to make sure they both understood words weren’t enough. They had to think opposite, too. If the queen figured out what they were trying to do--

  No. The queen is in complete command of our thoughts and understands them perfectly. There was no way to fool or confuse her.

  When their first meal was brought to them, they chatted amiably about how much they enjoyed the uncooked tubers and sticky resin the Tilkilit fed them. Their praise and enthusiasm became so absurd that they actually laughed. Cazia could feel the queen’s thoughts growing calm.

  At midday, a warrior still laid an anti-magic stone against her bare neck, and the shock of it made her collapse into the grass. These stones are killing me.

  The queen felt more remote for the rest of the day, and a tiny hope that they were pleasing her kindled in Cazia’s thoughts. Still, she turned her concentration toward the game in the same way she had drilled her thoughts down into Gifts when she was learning spells.

  They spent the day lying on the grass in the chill, blowing mists. The little warriors circled them in steady, unceasing patrols just within the treeline. The girls ate, sang more songs, and whiled away the hours.

  It surprised each of them how quickly the game became second nature.

  That night, Cazia did not have her magic taken away by the anti-magic stone. She fell asleep wondering if they would come to her in the morning. They didn’t.

  “I’m disappointed to feel my magic returning,” she told the other girls. “Just a little so far. It’s been so good to be free of it. Still, if the queen has need of it, I’m ready to serve.”

  It was two more days before the warriors moved into the center of the clearing, spears at the ready. Bags of food and skins of water were cast at their feet, then they were prodded until they stood.

  The ground trembled, rustling the leaves in the nearby trees. All three felt the meadow beneath them rise slightly, then settle down again. Another of the Tilkilit’s massive worms had passed beneath them, this one much closer to the surface.

  ::You will make a tunnel through the mountains to the south. It will be broad enough for all of us.::

  Doing your will is my deepest wish. The queen seemed satisfied by this, and the group set out.

  The mists were so thick, it was difficult to be sure which direction they were traveling. All Cazia could be certain of was that they were going uphill. “I hope,” she said, “that we’re so close to the base of the cliffs that we can start digging for the queen without any distractions.”

  That didn’t happen. The Tilkilit lead them over a hill that was thick with young oak trees. For a moment, the mists were thin enough to see the Northern Barrier looming above them. There was a two-day march ahead of them if they kept a good pace.

  “That fast-moving river is dangerous,” Kinz said, pointing far out toward a low place on the valley floor ahead of them. The fast-swirling mists were thin there, and they could just barely see a low, wide river with white water at the edges. “We could easily drown if we fell in.”

  “We should definitely not do that, then,” Ivy offered.

  “But if you do,” Kinz said, “the best possible thing you can do in a fast-moving river is to put your feet down. Always, always try to stand in a strong current.”

  One of the warriors prodded them in the back, forcing them onward. Cazia glanced upward and saw an eagle floating on the updrafts. It appeared to be quite close, but she knew that was an illusion created by the colossal size of the thing.

  They went down the hill, staying under the cover of the trees until they were safely back inside the concealing mists of the valley floor. The ground trembled again--that worm was moving with them, which didn’t bother Cazia at all. There were about three dozen warriors in their escort, but there might have been more ahead or behind in the column. Boy, was she glad to see so many of the queen’s soldiers around them.

  They didn’t reach the riverbanks until midmorning of the next day. The mists were thin here. The Tilkilit skirted the shallow, gradual banks, turning west to head upriver. The churning river was surprisingly loud.

  When they made camp that night, Cazia couldn’t help but imagine the source of the river--how close was it to the portal at the westernmost part of the Qorr Valley?—and its outlet. Like all sensible Peradaini, she had a well-earned horror of the sea, and the idea that she might fall into the river and be swept out beyond the shore made her stomach flutter like a cage full of moths.

  The Tilkilit woke them the next morning before dawn. Of course. The eagles were least active at sunrise and sundown, so if there was a safe time to cross the river, it was before the start of the day.

  “Look at this,” Kinz said.

  The trees nearest the river were looking ragged and sick. Stone spikes had been driven into the trunk and a clear liquid dripped from the tip of the spike into wooden bowls hanging below. Tilkilit warriors emptied the bowls into their skins.

  Now that Kinz had pointed it out, Cazia saw the little spikes everywhere. Was the nasty resin the insect people ate drained from trees? If so, they were killing this forest.

  Those poor insect people, trapped in a valley too small to hold them, especially with the queen laying so many eggs. Why, if they didn’t escape soon, they might even suffer famine.

  The queen’s thoughts were faint but still present. How powerful she was!

  By dawn, they came to a narrow part of the river. A minor rockslide on the far bank made the water narrow enough that it had been spanned by a felled tree.

  As they climbed up the exposed roots, Cazia said, “You know what I hate? Those black stones the Tilkilit carry. The ones that take away my magic. I hope I never have to travel with them again.”

  Kinz glanced at the warrior just ahead of her on the trunk. The sack of stones was hanging from his sash on the left side. Cazia noticed for the first time that his sash was edged with black. Was he a commander of some kind? “Be careful,” Kinz said. “Stay close to me so I can show you the part you where you really don’t want to make a fall.”

  Once they’d reached the top of the trunk, the three girls stayed close together. The warriors around them paid more attention to the awkward curve of the tree and the skies above them than they did the girls, and why not? The girls were friends of the Tilkilit. Loyal friends.

  They were barely at the midpoint when Kinz cried out--in the least believable way you could imagine--as though she was losing her balance. She clutched at the nearest warrior and dragged him over the side of the trunk into the churning water.

  As they fell, Cazia saw Kinz grab hold of the Tilkilit’s pouch of stones.

  Ivy went over the edge before Cazia even had a chance to realize this was the moment. Warriors surged toward her and she leaped outward just beyond their reach.

  At the last moment, Cazia changed the angle of her fall so she landed on the Tilkilit in the water with both of her knees.

  Chapter 2

  Tyr Tejohn Treygar woke in terrible pain, but it was not as terrible as he’d expected. His legs, his back, his pelvis—they felt as swollen as risen dough and were blooming with raw agony, but considering the fall he’d taken...

  He was facedown in the dirt. Dry dirt, too, like a hard-packed floor, not the wet river silt of the banks of the Wayward River. No, it was called the Shelsiccan now. The old Peradaini names were being thrown away in favor of the even-older Finshto ones.

  “He didn’t cry out,” someone said. Tejohn wanted to turn to see who had spoken, but flexing his neck muscles to lift his head intensified the agony in his shoulders and back. Great Way, his mouth was parched.

  “Because he was still unconscious when he hit,” another voice said. Tejohn recognized that voice immediately. Tyr Finstel’s men had captured him a second time, but this time, the tyr himself had come to question him.

  No, not “Tyr,” he reminded himself. The old imperial ranks had also been cast off. No longer a tyr, a tyrant
, or a chief, he’d declared himself King Shunzik Finstel, lord of Ussmajil and all the lands that holdfast protected.

  But where were they? The flickering light suggested a lantern. They were indoors, somewhere, or it was nighttime.

  Something pressed against his left calf, and the agony became so intense, Tejohn thought it must be a white-hot iron or maybe a dull knife. The urge to turn and see what was happening to him was almost as strong as the pain itself, but he couldn’t manage even that. He was helpless. Fire and Fury, the pain grew so huge that he had to cry out with all his strength. His voice sounded dry, hoarse, and weak.

  “No more is required,” King Shunzik said. “Just my hand on your flesh. No more than this.”

  Was that just the touch of a man’s hand? Despair flooded Tejohn. This much pain would destroy him, and however overwhelming it felt, inflicting it was trivially easy. Worse, Finstel sounded as if he was enjoying himself. Tejohn almost asked why.

  “Where is Lar Italga?” the king asked.

  Tejohn could see nothing but hard-packed black dirt as his mind raced through a clash of images. Nothing came together; the pain was too great for him to think clearly. He could see Lar’s face before him, laughing. Lar Italga was the uncrowned king of Peradain, the Morning City. He was the last of his royal bloodline, bereft of soldiers, palace, everything…even the empire he had been born to rule.

  I have plans for this empire, Tyr Treygar, plans that would end much of the misery and injustice my people endure, plans I have nursed since I was a small boy. But Lar was gone now, vanished like the empire, and all of Kal-Maddum had fallen into misery and injustice.