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

  Cazia glanced to her right, peering through the mists. The cliffs were over there, but she could not see them. She had no idea how far away the mountains were or how to find their entry point. Not that it mattered, as long as Kinz still had that bag of Tilkilit stones.

  It wasn’t long before the water didn’t feel cold at all, which was probably not a good thing. She tried to loosen the knots holding her skirts to her hips, but her fingers were too numb to make much progress, and wet knots were always harder than dry ones. They had to get out of the water as soon as they reached a safe distance from their captors…whatever that was.

  The current swept them around bend after bend, but always they continued generally eastward. The river widened and the water slowed. The banks receded from view on either side and the sky above them showed a lot of blue. It was a beautiful blue of the sort that makes families put aside an hour’s chores to walk through meadow or just to thank The Way for a beautiful summer day.

  But it was dangerous for Cazia, Ivy, and Kinz, because it meant they were exposed to the eagles. Cazia couldn’t see any of the raptors floating above them, but it was only a matter of time before one spotted them.

  Kinz was already stroking toward the southern bank, with Ivy clinging to her back. Cazia felt a twinge of guilt that she’d left Kinz to care for the girl, and began to paddle after them. She’d always considered herself a strong swimmer, when she got the chance, but she couldn’t help but envy the older girl’s long, steady strokes. Worse, she realized the current had already carried them out of the river into a lake as large as Peradain itself.

  Then she looked down. The water was cold and clear, and the slanting early sunlight allowed her to see all the way to the bottom.

  There was a skull of a gigantic creature below her. It was lying on its side, its eye socket empty of everything but a few wriggling fish. It was long and flat like a sword’s blade, and its mouth was jagged with impossible teeth. Each of those teeth was as long as an Ozzhuack spear.

  The sight made Cazia gasp with terror and she nearly choked on a mouthful of water. The creature had massive ribs that came near the surface of the water but no limbs that she could see. Fish clustered around the last few strips of flesh clinging to the bones, slowly tearing it away to expose the white. Was this creature some sort of serp--

  An eel. A surge of raw terror rushed through Cazia. They had come much, much closer to the ocean than she had thought. Suddenly, the Tilkilit no longer mattered. The monstrous eagles above no longer mattered. All she cared about now was that they not be swept out to sea.

  She swam as hard as she could, doing her best to mimic Kinz’s style, but it didn’t seem to matter. The flow had her and was driving her eastward. The river, which she had thought would save her, was quickly becoming her Enemy.

  Or maybe not. The current flushed her into a backwater on the southeastern end of the lake, and when she finally crawled through the stony shallows toward the shore, she saw Kinz and Ivy had already collapsed onto the grass.

  “I thought you could make to swim,” Kinz admonished, and really, Cazia was not in the mood.

  “Not drowning is swimming,” she snapped. Her teeth were chattering and her limbs numb. The stones should have been painful against her bare feet, but she couldn’t feel it. She scrambled wearily off the shore and wrapped her arms around Ivy. The princess’s lips were blue and her eyes were half closed. Cazia pulled her close and held on, hoping her own shivering body would warm the girl, even if just a little.

  Kinz’s lips were blue, too, but she had the strength to move around. “One of those little fish bit me. I--” An idea caught hold of her and she hurried into the trees, emerging a short time later with a long, rough wooden branch. With a flattish piece of flint she found near the water, Kinz shaved branch and leaf off of it, then created a rough point.

  Then she went down into the shallow eddy, going deep enough that the small bloody bite mark on her calf was below the surface. She stood utterly still, makeshift spear at the ready, waiting for her own blood to draw in a fish.

  A sharpened stick. Cazia had been right, and the image made her laugh weakly. Kinz gave her a flat look that Cazia couldn’t read, but she looked away. Ivy shivered against her and Cazia began to rub the girl’s arms and hands to warm them.

  If only they had a fire--

  “Inzu blesses us,” Kinz said. She strode into deeper water and pulled from the water the strangest white fish Cazia had ever seen. No, it was her jacket, then both of her boots. The current had driven them into the eddy, just as it had driven her. Kinz carried them up onto the shore to dry.

  There was more flint scattered around the water’s edge, along the steep banks of gray silt. Grass grew just beyond that, lying atop the hills around them like a rough blanket. Black-barked trees with yellow-green leaves stood even farther back from the water, casting heavy shadows on the ground around them.

  Cazia hissed and pointed out into the deeper water. A brownish hump with little splashes at its edges floated toward them like a cautious predator. “Get back!” Cazia whispered harshly, but Kinz ignored her, moving forward with the spear held at the ready.

  Everything was quiet, and Cazia heard the distant crashing of ocean waves upon a shore.

  Kinz, now thigh-deep in the water, stabbed toward the brown hump and lifted her spear. There was a wriggling fish on the end. With a flick, she slung it onto the grass, then struck four more.

  Eventually, she cried out and backed sloshing from the water. Cazia suddenly recognized the brown hump; it was the Tilkilit warrior she had jumped onto, and the splashes around it had been fish feeding on the corpse. Kinz’s loud rush to shore had frightened them away.

  “I can start a fire,” Cazia said. She could feel her magic inside her; it wasn’t strong, but it was enough to light kindling.

  “Sit. You have the deep chill,” Kinz said. Her lips were returning to their natural color. “It is making your thinking weak. We are being hunted from the west and from the sky above. No fire.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Cazia insisted, certain that her thinking was completely logical. “How are we going to eat fish without--”

  Kinz laid the largest fish on a rock and bashed its skull with a second rock. Then she dug her fingers into the gill and tore the head off. After splitting it open down the center with a piece of flint, she offered the raw wet flesh to Ivy.

  Under normal circumstances, Ivy and Cazia would have recoiled in disgust at the idea of eating raw fish, but the cold water had stolen their strength. Ivy tore into the flesh with all the energy she could bear, and Cazia did the same. After they’d chewed every morsel from the skin and spit out the scales, then stripped the bones down, Kinz held out a little red organ to the princess. “The heart,” she said. “It will give you strength.”

  Ivy took it and swallowed it down.

  Kinz glanced at Cazia as she reached into the other guts. “You should have the lungs to make calm your breath.”

  “Ugh,” Cazia said. “Don’t ask me to eat lungs.”

  Kinz poked Cazia’s forehead with one bloody finger. “See? Weak thinking. Fish do not have lungs. Now, sit.”

  Kinz gave them a second fish to share, and she ate one herself. Cazia was sure the others had cheated her out of her fair portion, but she knew better than to make the accusation aloud. Weak thinking. Kinz and Ivy would never cheat her. Cazia was simply hungry, cold, and confused.

  They ate everything off those fish that Kinz would allow, but it wasn’t enough. It was still summer, and as the day grew warmer, Ivy’s color returned. Cazia walked to the lake’s edge to look for more fish, but the warrior’s body had been swept back out into deeper water and there were no more fish to be caught.

  “We should get moving,” Ivy said. “I want to see the ocean.”

  “What?” Cazia exclaimed, her voice so loud that she slapped her hand over her mouth. “No, we can’t go near the ocean. We’re trying to get out of this valley alive, rememb
er?”

  “We can make a detour,” Ivy said. “I have never seen this part of Boskorul’s realm; none of my people have.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “As an Ergoll, I am expected to make religious pilgrimages to parts of Boskorul’s realm. It is a sacred tradition. None of my people will have seen this part of the sea before today, and it would be an unforgivable insult to spurn the chance. It would offend our god.”

  Kinz shrugged. “I vote against making offense to the gods, even the gods of your folk traditions.”

  Cazia wasn’t sure which girl she should be more annoyed with. Actually, yes, she was. The oceans teemed with monsters; everyone knew that.

  Kinz stepped toward her. “Stop scowling, Scowler. I have something that will make you feel better.” She held up a bag that Cazia recognized immediately.

  “You still have them!” She peered down as Kinz fumbled with the leather strip holding it shut. Great Way, she’d completely forgotten about the bag of stones.

  “That is not all I got,” Kinz said. “I made to follow that particular warrior across the bridge for one reason.” She opened the pouch. Inside was the blue translation stone that Cazia had made so long ago.

  “You didn’t!” A flush of relief washed through her. Hers. That magic was hers.

  Kinz smiled in a crooked way Cazia had never seen from her before. “I did.”

  Cazia wanted to reach into the pouch to grab it, but there were four anti-magic stones inside. And, she suddenly realized, they were touching the translation stone. “Did the black stones drain the spell from it?”

  Kinz’s smile faltered. She took the blue gem from the pouch, saying only “Tingles” as her fingertips brushed the other stones. Translation stone in her fist, she turned to Ivy.

  The princess said something in her native language. Ergoll, she’d called it. Whatever she said, it was short and guttural, like trying to get someone’s attention with a mouthful of pebbles. Cazia didn’t think it was the same language she had spoken at the edge of the ruined Indregai camp. Kinz seemed pleased. “Thank you.”

  Cazia accepted the gem and slipped it into her pocket. It felt absurdly good to have something of her own. Sure, she could have made another with a bit of effort and the right sort of mineral, but those minerals were hard to find and the spell was exhausting. Why should she have to? The gem would have been worth a small fortune back in Peradain—before, of course--but the Tilkilit didn’t even know what they’d had.

  Ivy turned toward the east just as a heavy bank of fog topped the hill to the east and rolled over them. The slow, rhythmic crash of the surf was louder in the wet air. “You can’t mean to drag us there,” Cazia said. “We have no food, no shelter, and an actual army hunting us. Do either of you know how long it will take to find a way over the mountains? Because I don’t. We have to escape the valley with what we know. We have to bring these stones back with us.”

  Cazia pointed toward the pouch in Kinz’s hand, and she tucked it into her belt.

  Her pleas could not sway the other two, no matter what she said. She was tempted to threaten to leave them, but she couldn’t bear the thought that they’d call her bluff. She’d been so horrible to Ivy after she’d gone hollow, she was not sure where they stood. The princess had said she wanted to put that behind them, but if Cazia pushed too hard, she might make an Enemy of the girl. Of both of them—it had been Kinz who looked after Ivy in the water, after all.

  So they set out eastward without packs or supplies, their boots squishing in the mossy mud. Once on the move, they were quiet by mutual unspoken agreement, climbing uphill in the mists. The sun was a bright white spot against the bright white sky, and they followed it through the morning. The fog was awful; they could have seen farther with torches on a moonlit night. Cazia knew that somewhere to the north, the lake would be flowing into the ocean, but she was glad not to be near it.

  She wondered, though, at the way Ivy and Kinz calmly approached the water. Were imperial shores the only ones troubled by sea giants and other monsters? It was possible that Ivy’s ocean god--Boskole, or whatever she called it--kept the eastern side of the Indrega Peninsula safe, but only if it were real, and Cazia wasn’t ready to accept that. As for Kinz, well, Cazia had underestimated her before, but she seemed to have been created to be underestimated. Maybe she really did understand the dangers. Maybe she was just brave.

  As the morning grew late, the fog finally thinned again, and the other girls picked up the pace. Cazia followed, trying to convince herself the others knew what they were doing and that this would be a safe detour. She’d only seen the ocean once in her life, after all, and that from a distance. Maybe the Ergoll and Poalo peoples took family picnics on the beach.

  They finally topped another hill. The fog had burned away more than expected, and they could see a fair distance.

  The ocean rolled and surged just at the foot of the hill. She could have reached the beach in two hundred paces, maybe three. From there, it would have been another fifty before the water touched her feet. The waves crashed and rolled in toward the shore, over and over, in an endless assault.

  On the right, to the south, was a jagged ridge of rocks that ran out into the water. It must have been the end of the Northern Barrier, battered down by the endless waves. The ridge was slick black stone and made nearly vertical cliffs, except in the places the waters had worn an overhang.

  To the left was another ridge and smattering of black stones, but these were more sparse and didn’t extend as far from shore. Many of them stood like irregular towers amid the crashing waves. Both ridges served to narrow the bay and blunt the force of the surging ocean.

  That first time Cazia had seen the ocean, she had stood within a tower at Rivershelf and watched the waters churn. Three great eels had battled a great hulking thing that floated just below the waves. The battle had been terrifying, even at a distance, and the sounds that echoed through the city had chilled her blood. The stones of Rivershelf’s waterfront had been awash in red and black fluids, which servants had collected at terrible personal risk. Two had been snatched from dry land by a tentacle that had dragged them down into the sea while she watched.

  Monsters. The ocean was full of monsters, and human beings did not even dare to approach it, except in a few select places like Rivershelf or the Bay of Stones, where the shallows stretched far from the shore.

  Here, though, she saw nothing. Her brother--and how the memory of him pained her--had said they’d seen a rare sight that day in Rivershelf, but she’d never really believed him. She had always suspected that that sort of massive combat was a daily sight. Yet here they were, looking over the churning waters with no idea what might lie beneath.

  “That is unexpected,” Kinz said. They turned southward to follow her gaze.

  Low against the cliff wall, right at the edge of the beach, was a squat stone tower. It was the same color as the black ridge behind it, and Cazia was embarrassed not to have noticed it herself. Still, there it was just the same, with a conical roof and short, wide windows.

  “We should go back,” Cazia said.

  “It is too late,” Ivy said. “The way we are standing out on this hill, they are sure to have seen us.”

  Then we should run, Cazia wanted to say. Kinz spoke first. “Assuming anyone is there. Does it not look abandoned to you?”

  It did. Cazia had to admit that it did.

  Ivy turned toward her. “Big sister,” she said, with surprising warmth, “I know how you feel about the ocean--I know how the Peradaini people feel--but we have risked so much to search for answers, have we not?”

  “We have our answers,” Cazia said quietly.

  “Not all of them,” Ivy said. She glanced back at the tower. “This seems like it could be important, does it not?”

  “Yes,” Cazia answered. “Little sister, you’re right. It might be important. But we have learned so much that needs to be shared with your people and mine. And yours, too,” she said to Kin
z.

  “I am glad you made to include me,” the older girl said with a sardonic smile.

  “Sorry. Listen, it is not just about the Tilkilit, the eagles, and the portal. It is those stones.” She pointed to the pouch Kinz was wearing. “I can’t carry them but you two can. They could change the way magic is done. They could turn the war against the grunts in our favor.”

  “In your favor,” Kinz said. “For your empire.”

  “Monument sustain me,” Cazia spat, because she didn’t want to wish the girl Fire-taken. “Would you take the grunts over the Peradaini people?”

  “I will take neither,” Kinz answered, bringing her open hand down like a chopping ax. “I want them to destroy each other so I can make again my clan and live like free people.”

  Goose bumps ran down Cazia’s back and her face grew warm. “You’re talking about women and children, too. You’re talking about lives lost while we dawdle. With these stones, our scholars could save lives.”

  Kinz glared. She pushed her dark hair out of her face--she needed to re-braid it, but Fire take the idea that Cazia would touch that oily mess. Let Ivy do it, if they were going to ally against her.

  Then the older girl turned away and marched across the slope of the hill toward the tower.

  Cazia lunged forward and caught Ivy’s elbow. “Little sister,” she said, half afraid the younger girl would object. “Let her go ahead. She’s got the only weapon, such as it is. And she’s...” Cazia wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. She dislikes me because of things I didn’t do and had no control over. It’s not fair.

  “Cazia,” the princess said, her tone annoyingly patient. “Kinz has buried the family. She has seen the family killed by Peradaini soldiers because they objected to the size of the tribute—taxes, I meant to say. Do not argue; I will call them taxes while talking with you. However, you should understand that whatever Peradaini kings say, the herding clans of the Sweeps consider themselves free people. If you do not want her to treat you like an enemy, do not treat her as though you have the same desires. She is not a subject to either of us.”