The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way Read online

  Chapter 4

  “You can’t do that!” Tejohn said. “There are children down there. Babes in arms!”

  “And soldiers!” Tyr Twofin cried. “And priests studying magic in secret, and scheming tyrs, and the witch-queen of Peradain, Amlian Italga! There is no other way for me to be safe!” The old man took a deep breath and tried to control himself. “And, of course, no other way to ensure the safety of my people. When the time comes, my brother assures me that we can plug the hole in Twofin Lake. The waters will never return to their normal levels, but if there are more portals beneath the waves--and of course there are, there must be--the flood waters will drain out into other realms. Only then will it be safe for my people to claim the lowland farms that had rightfully been ours before the Bendertuks came.”

  “Farms flooded with salt water? And what if the grunts have already reached the mountains? What if you murder all those people only to find that your enemy has survived. No, my tyr, please do not do this. There is no honor in this. It is genocide.”

  “Psh. There are no grunts in the upper wilds, not when there are so many lowlanders to feed on. Besides, the beasts have neither boots nor hooves; how would they move among the rocks?” The old tyr shook his bald head and frowned. His certitude was unshakeable. “No. This is the only way. That’s why I have already sent mining scholars out into the peaks. Even now, they tunnel toward the bottom of the lake.”

  Tejohn stared at him in astonishment. So, this was not a plan for the future? It was already happening? Tejohn half expected to hear the sudden rush of a newborn waterfall right at that moment.

  “No tyr has the kind of power at their command as I do,” Twofin said haughtily. “And as for those babes in arms you’re so worried about, they aren’t my--”

  He never finished that sentence. Tejohn spun suddenly, snatching a spear from the nearest guard.

  Tyr Twofin, to his credit, reacted swiftly, starting immediately toward the great hall. Unfortunately for him, that only made Tejohn’s attack stronger.

  Tejohn swung the spear like a bludgeon, bringing the butt end down on top of the old man’s head. If the tyr had still been close, he might have survived it. Instead, he was struck by the very end of the shaft, where the blow was most powerful.

  The wood shattered with a noise that made everyone in the hall cry out. Without pausing, Tejohn spun back toward the two guards and, holding the spear blade by the broken haft, plunged the tip into the throat of the guard he had not disarmed.

  He was no more than a boy, and he died with a look of surprise on his face. He hadn’t even finished drawing his sword.

  The guard Tejohn had disarmed stood frozen in shock. Who had trained this boy? Tejohn lifted a leg and kicked him square on the fake muscles of his cuirass, knocking him through the crumbling railing and over the edge of the balcony.

  Tejohn immediately dropped the broken weapon and snatched up the fallen spear.

  “WHO DARES!” he shouted. The rage in his voice surprised even him. It had come upon him before he had a chance to recognize it, but it was undeniable. “Who dares cross weapons with Tejohn Treygar?”

  He suddenly noticed the tremble in his hands and the pain in his legs. He was not ready for a pitched battle, not with eight soldiers standing opposite him. Fire and Fury, he didn’t even have a shield, nor did he have time to take one from the dead boy behind him.

  No matter how strong his anger, he wasn’t ready for this.

  But no one charged him. No one called the soldiers to attention or to form a line. They glanced at him, then looked down at the dead tyr. No one stepped forward to take command. No one moved against him.

  Tejohn turned toward a sudden movement and saw Doctor Twofin pushing open a secret panel in the wall. It was too far to run, so Great Way help him, Tejohn drew back the spear as if it was a javelin and threw it.

  The point tore through the old wizard’s robes, and there was a cry of pain as the doctor slipped out of sight. The spear point wedged into the wood, preventing the panel from shutting all the way.

  Tejohn drew a sword from the fallen man and charged after him. Fire and Fury, his aching legs made him hobble, but he pushed onward.

  The panel would not budge when he threw his weight against it. Fire take the man, he’d cast a stone block behind it.

  Tejohn spun toward the room. The bureaucrat who had greeted Granny Nin stepped forward. One of the merchants, a well-fed older man with thinning gray hair and a mild way of not looking directly at anyone, came with him.

  “Welcome, my tyr,” the merchant said. “My name is Amis Redegg. If there is any way I can bring you comfort in your great hall, please let me know.”

  There was some muttering in the back of the hall. The door opened.

  “No one leaves!” Tejohn shouted. He stalked the length of the hall, sword in hand. The three merchants with their hands in the latch paused uncertainly, then stepped back inside, letting the door swing shut.

  Someone shouted to Tejohn’s right, a cry meant to muster courage. One of the Twofin guards charged at him, short spear held low.

  Tejohn sidestepped the attack easily, caught the shaft, and threw his shoulder into the man. Instinct almost made him plunge his sword deep into the man’s belly, but he held back. When the man flopped onto his belly, Tejohn laid a heavy foot on his back and placed the point of his sword between his shoulder blades.

  “Loyal, were you?” Tejohn spat. “Your tyr planned to drown innocent people all across the continent, but you were a loyal soldier and said nothing.”

  “I swore an oath!” the guard said. “My honor… If you’re going to kill me, do it!”

  “I don’t take orders from you.” Tejohn stamped down on the man’s arm. To his credit, the guard didn’t cry out. “Where are the tyr’s heirs, eh? Does he have sons?”

  The people began to murmur and move about. Several of the soldiers shifted their grips on their weapons. “In the holdfast,” Redegg said mildly. “Nearby.”

  “How are they? Big, strapping young men?”

  “Oh, they’re quite vigorous,” the merchant said, “for a five- and a three-year-old.”

  “Fire take the man,” Tejohn said, glancing at the corpse by the balcony. “He was a sack of wrinkles. Doesn’t he have any sons older than that?”

  “He had, my tyr,” Redegg replied, “but he did not trust them. Eventually, he gave each of them a berth in the airiest room in the west.”

  Silence. There was no oath strong enough for this. Tejohn stepped away from the soldier. “Stand up, and do it quickly.” His anger hadn’t faded and he was speaking in his commander voice again. When the man had gained his feet, Tejohn glared at him. “You, soldier, what’s your name?”

  “Ulo Winterfall. My tyr.”

  “Well, Ulo Winterfall, I’m giving you the second most important task of the day. You are going to take three spears and you are going to collect the Twofin heirs. You’re going to take them to a safe place, where no one can find them. Not me. Not Redegg here. And certainly not their uncle, the hollowed-out scholar. For the next fifteen years, Great Way willing, a steward will run his holdfast. When the eldest boy comes of age, a Twofin will rule these lands again. You’re a Twofin yourself?”

  The soldier looked dumbfounded. “A distant cousin.”

  “Well, listen closely. You will be guarding those children with your life. You and your men will not stand idly by while they are killed, and you will not strike out in their defense after it is already too late. You will fight and die to protect them.”

  “I will,” he said defiantly, as though Tejohn was promising to find him and kill him later. He called for three of his companions and left by a side door.

  “My tyr,” Redegg said quietly, “or…should I call you ‘steward’?”

  “You should not. Ellifer Italga himself named me a tyr; that title is mine. I won’t be staying long enough to be steward of this place. You don’t seem terribly upset about what I did to Tyr Twofin.”
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  “No,” the old man said. He turned to look at the dead man on the floor. The top of Iskol’s skull had been crushed and his right eye bulged slightly from the socket. “No, I suspect very few of us are. My own mother married a lowlander and lives down there with him even now.”

  His mother? She must have been the oldest woman on Kal-Maddum. Before Tejohn could say anything further, the bureaucrat said, “And my sister, too, along with her little children.”

  “And my daughter.” Another merchant stepped forward. He was about Tejohn’s age and looked as fit as a life-long campaigner, no matter how fine the cloth of this robes. “She’ll be giving me a grandchild in the fall, if the Little Spinner wills it. My first.”

  The grunts will take them all, Tejohn almost said, but Redegg spoke before he could think of a diplomatic response.

  “You won’t be staying? Forgive me, but I assumed you struck down Iskol Twofin for his chair.”

  “There are only two things Iskol Twofin had that I want,” Tejohn said. “I need provisions and a replacement for the scholar the tyr executed. After that, I’ll be on my way.” Tejohn looked the two merchants up and down. “It will be up to you lot to protect your loved ones here and in the lowlands. Your mother? Your daughter? They’ll be dead if no one stops those mining scholars. Who can call them back into the holdfast without a fight? We must stop them before their guards hear about the death of the tyr. Otherwise, they might want draw steel over it.”

  “Young Findwater could manage it,” Redegg said, gesturing toward the bureaucrat.

  “How many guards will they have?”

  Findwater bowed slightly. “Only two at the mouth of the tunnel.”

  “Go then, and quickly,” Tejohn said. “Have the scholars brought here to me. And bring eight spears with you in case they resist.”

  “Eight?” Redegg seemed surprised, but he stared meekly at the floor while he spoke. “Surely four would be enough to defeat two.”

  Tejohn scowled at him. “Four could kill two, yes. Eight will convince two to surrender without a fight. Your people are going to need every spear--”

  The doors boomed and swung open. Everyone turned toward the light. A soldier with a green cloak and a comb on his helmet marched into the hall, a Twofin shield on his arm and a dozen soldiers at his back. “Who usurps the Twofin chair?” the man in the comb shouted.

  “No one,” Tejohn snapped back. “Who are you?”

  “Commander Lowtower,” he said, glaring at Tejohn with his head tilted to the right. He wore an eye patch, also green, over one eye. “What Fire-taken fool are you?”

  They had all taken Peradaini names. “Tyr Tejohn Treygar. Your tyr confessed to a crime and I executed him.”

  The bureaucrat Findwater cleared his throat. “I’m going to see to that matter now.” He gave a steady look to the commander that seemed full of meaning. Young Findwater waved at several of the tyr’s guards and hurried out of the hall.

  The dozen soldiers who had entered with the commander held the points of their short spears level, and aimed them at Tejohn. While the room was silent, the commander crossed to Iskol Twofin’s corpse and spat on it.

  “Give me a good reason,” Lowtower said as he came back to middle of the hall where Tejohn stood, “not to kill you where you stand.”

  “Because you won’t survive the coming war without my help. Now tell me why I shouldn’t strike you down! You knew what your tyr was planning; why did the task of ending his rule fall to a stranger?”

  “I knew,” the commander said. “The Twofins didn’t dare order me arrested for treason, but the tyr would never let me come within fifteen feet of him, even without arms…not that I could have touched him while he held my wife and daughters in his prison. He never left this building, was never without his guards, and tried to bribe my own soldiers to knife me in my sleep. His rule was thin enough to snap until his Fire-taken brother showed up.”

  “Send three of your spears into the cells and free your family. Go with them if you like, but I’ll need you to give command of the rest of your spears to me.”

  Lowtower’s body jolted as though he’d been struck. He clearly wanted to go to his family immediately, but instead, he grabbed one of his men by the shoulder. “Find them. Take them to my home. Tell my wife I’ll join her there when I know it’s safe.” The young man ran off. “There are more,” the commander said to Tejohn. “Many more.”

  “Perhaps we should not be hasty in freeing them all,” Redegg said. “This is an uncertain time, and if we could first get oaths of loyalty—”

  “Fire take that,” Tejohn said. “The old tyr’s hostages will be sorted from the real criminals and freed. Let the steward extract what oaths he can get. But that has to wait. The tyr’s brother is still alive, somewhere in the holdfast. He has to be found and killed before he goes after the Twofin heirs. You three!” Tejohn shouted to the ones Twofin had called whisperers. “Come here. What role do you play in this court?”

  The three women looked at him, then each other. Their hair was tinged with red and their complexion was fairer than most. Where they sisters? There was too much Tejohn didn’t know about the relationships here. The shortest of the sisters stepped forward and bowed like a man. “We listen to the people, low and high, for the benefit of our tyr.”

  Spies. “Good. I need you to tell me where to find Doctor Twofin. Where has he gone? Where are his secret places? He may have been here only a short while, but he has to have secret places.”

  The women shrugged in unison, as though they shared a single mind. “We know nothing of the tyr’s family. That was forbidden.”

  “Of course it was,” Tejohn snapped, “but you did it anyway, yes? You can’t gather information without hearing all sorts of things, even by accident. Come, no one will punish you for this.”

  They shrugged again, regretful. Useless. Whether it was out of true ignorance or a loyalty to the dead tyr, Tejohn couldn’t tell. He’d have to deal with it later. “What about his rooms?” he asked. “Surely that’s not a secret.”

  “Young Findwater--” Redegg began, but stopped himself. Findwater was already on another errand.

  “I know the way.” It was the merchant who was Tejohn’s own age. “I’ve sold supplies to him in the past.”

  “What’s your name?” Tejohn asked. “And what supplies?”

  “Colz Bluepetal, my tyr. Tyr Twofin’s brother asked me to go hunting for him.”

  “Lead the way. Commander, bring your men with you.”

  Bluepetal led them through another side door into a dark corridor. There were no lamps or candles here and precious little light. Still, the merchant set a quick pace, for which Tejohn was grateful.

  “I don’t understand the problem,” Redegg called from the back of the group. “We can make a peaceful offer to the doctor, can’t we? Offer him safe passage out of Twofin lands, perhaps.”

  “He is a hollowed-out medical scholar,” Tejohn called back without breaking stride. And I was so pleased to rescue him that I didn’t see it. “I wouldn’t deliberately set him loose on the countryside any more than I would unleash those floodwaters. And he knows what will happen to him if he’s caught: he’ll be lucky to lose only his fingers.”

  They turned down a flight of stairs at the end of the hall, then went deeper and deeper into the holdfast. What had seemed to be a two-story wooden structure from the courtyard turned out to be much deeper and more complex. The black stone walls of the tunnel were damp and gritty, and in several places the corridors narrowed into natural choke points where a few defenders could hold off a much larger force. In other places, the walls on the western side of the corridor simply weren’t there, turning a tunnel into a long gallery that looked out onto the black peaks, the darkening sky, and the murky waters of Twofin Lake below. There was no pink granite in the construction anywhere, and the wooden doors they passed were so thin and warped that he could glance into the rooms without opening them.

  Finally, they cam
e to a broad corridor with a heavy wooden door in the center. This door fit snugly. There would be no peeking here. “This is it,” Bluepetal said. Like Redegg, he lingered near the turning of the hall, beside the gallery.

  “What if he’s there?” one of the soldiers asked.

  Tejohn scowled at him, but before he could answer, Lowtower spoke. “We fan out and come at him from every direction. Points low.”

  “Commander, I need a moment of your time.” Tejohn pulled Lowtower aside. The two merchants weren’t invited into the conversation, but they moved close enough to hear anyway. “We don’t fan out. Wizards--that’s what a hollow scholar is--use the Gifts differently. We have to rush him at full speed in a single column, shields high.”

  “What about the men at the front of the column?”

  “What do you think? You need to understand something: we must kill this man. I have a job to do in Tempest Pass, but I can’t return if this hollowed-out scholar takes command of the Twofin lands and Salt Pass. We need to face him here and now. If none of us survive, someone else has to go to Ghoron Italga in his tower and retrieve that skull-destroying spell.”

  “Hm.” Redegg said. “Not exactly an auspicious name for a spell that will supposedly save us all.”

  “As far as I can tell,” Tejohn said, “it doesn’t have a name. It’s a variation of the Fifth Gift; it turns a person’s insides into clean water.

  “Monument sustain me,” Lowtower muttered.

  Tejohn couldn’t blame him. “I know. But we don’t have another truly effective weapon to use against The Blessing. Now line your men up.”

  The commander formed the men into a long column. “You push forward,” he snapped at them. “You keep your shield high.”

  Tejohn looked over the soldiers. They were all men, and they were a sorry bunch. Not as useless as the old tyr’s “guards,” perhaps, but they muttered and shuffled their feet as they formed up. Tejohn wanted to slap each of them on the helmet, and Commander Lowtower deserved three, at least, for letting them get into this state.