The Way Into Chaos

by Harry Connolly

  Now several other warriors rushed to the back of the herd, moving with surprising speed and assurance. They leveled their spear points at the two dark-haired servants and shouted.

  The dark-haired girl lay sprawled on one of the okshim. Her brother helped her up and they retreated together toward the back of the herd, then leaped from the last of the animals, plunging into the water.

  Just a pretext, Cazia realized. The Ozzhuacks worked, slept, and ate while muddy, and no one seemed to care. If that girl was being whipped, it must have been a pretext for some other reason, and if there was one thing Cazia’s life had taught her to recognize, it was that.

  The two of them swam through the muddy lake water, pulling themselves ashore near the long grasses. Ivy said. “We should probably—”

  The girl cried out. Now that they were only a few paces away, Cazia could see that she was slightly older than her brother. She had, maybe, a year on Cazia, although of course she had spent more time working in the sun. Both looked slender and strong. Both wore their hair oiled and braided. The boy stood.

  He looked directly at Cazia and Ivy--not in a hostile way--then looked all around. He was searching the landscape and the girls were just another part of it. There was nothing to see. He crouched beside his sister, stroked her hair once, then stood as if he’d made up his mind.

  He stalked across the marshy ground and fell onto his knees in front of the two girls. He held up his open hands, his head bowed, and said, “Accept us as your servants, and we will care for you in the wilderness. Do not abandon us here.” Great Way, he was so beautiful.

  Ivy turned to Cazia. “What do you think he wants?”

  He clapped his hands together, then held them up again. Ivy said something in another language, but when he didn’t respond, she tried another. He looked up at them, his expression apologetic. He couldn’t understand.

  “Take us with you, please!” the boy said. “You do not understand me, do you? Are my gestures not enough?”

  “Smile at them!” his older sister called.

  “I am smiling!” he called back, and yes indeed, he was. His smile was bright and his eyes twinkled; Cazia’s skin tingled when he looked at her.

  The boy ran to the dock and leaped into the water beside the raft. After a quick examination, he shook it by the corner. He immediately waved the girls over, calling, “You see? This is not safe! We can help you.” Cazia and Ivy stepped cautiously onto the dock to see what he was doing.

  He pointed to the corner and pushed the raft back and forth in the water. The narrow logs clacked against each other--clearly, they weren’t tightly lashed together.

  Cazia turned to Ivy. “Still sound,” she said, her tone sour. So much for Ozzhuacks repaying their kindness.

  The boy pulled the raft onto the muddy bank. He said, “Let us begin,” to his sister, and she followed him into the tall reeds. Within a few breaths, they had gathered enough reeds that they began twining them together. Soon, they began to wrap the raft more tightly.

  He kept saying, “We can help. You will see,” over and over, his tone assuring, and he smiled up as he said it.

  Cazia’s heart skipped. Great Way, he was beautiful.

  She stepped back and turned away, letting go of the translation stone. What did he think of her, in her muddy hiking skirts and jacket and tangled hair? Not much, she was sure, no matter how bright his smile.

  And anyway, who did he think he was, making her respond so powerfully? She could never trust someone like that.

  It was near midday when they finally finished working on the raft. The timbers had been bound so tightly that they no longer knocked together or twisted.

  Ivy turned to Cazia. “I do not suppose we can just leave them.”

  “I don’t suppose we should take them, either,” Cazia said, knowing very well that at the moment she sounded even more petulant than a twelve-year-old princess. “Mahz and Hent and the rest think this is suicide, but they want to go with us? I don’t trust them.”

  “Really?” Ivy sounded honestly surprised. “Why? Did they say something alarming? Is it because they were driven away from the Ozzhuacks?”

  Because he made me feel something I wasn’t ready to feel. “How could I know what they said? I don’t understand their language.” Ivy looked a little chastened, but just a little. “I don’t trust them, because we don’t know anything about them! Servants aren’t interchangeable, you know.”

  “If we do not take them,” Ivy said, “they will have nowhere else to go. No clan. I am pretty sure they are Poalos, and—”

  “Poalos!” The boy exclaimed. He pointed at his heart, then at his sister’s heart. “Poalos.”

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “That is right.” She turned to Cazia. “Mahz said the people had been destroyed. Without a clan, how are they supposed to survive? Just the two of them?”

  Cazia and Ivy made two, of course, and were even younger than the herders; such extraordinarily subtle hints weren’t wasted on her. “How is that our fault?” Cazia knew she sounded peevish but she couldn’t help it. “Besides, shouldn’t they be married or something? Mahz offered me a husband, but not them?”

  Ivy shrugged. “They are probably cousins. Among the Ergoll, if you take in your own family, you cannot marry them to make them work, so they become Men—I mean, servants.”

  Would the four of them really be safer than a pair? Cazia wanted to argue the point, but she couldn’t think of anything that she wouldn’t be embarrassed to say aloud. “Fine. But I don’t trust them, Ivy.” She lowered her voice. “Let’s treat them like spies.”

  “All right, then; I will not trust them, either. Not until you do.” Ivy turned to them, nodded her head once, then set her backpack on the ground. She pointed first at the pack, then the raft.

  Grinning broadly, the boy leaped forward to carry their packs onto the raft.

  The Poalos were too pleased to be accepted as servants. Servants in the palace--the most prestigious place in the world to work--had always seemed sullen and resigned, if not outright resentful. She hadn’t blamed them for being unhappy, of course, but it was still unpleasant.

  In contrast, the siblings seemed grateful and eager to please. They set Cazia’s and Ivy’s backpacks in the center of the raft, arranged so the girls could sit atop them. Ivy kept her spear upright and ready, so Cazia did the same. The Poalos used long poles to push away from the dock toward the okshim herd.

  The princess was startled at first, but Cazia knew where they were going. The Ozzhuacks had thrown the Poalos’ things from the back of the wagon, piling them beneath a tree on a muddy hump some distance away.

  After the siblings had collected their things, including a copper hatchet and fishing spear, they let Ivy direct them downriver. The servants glanced at each other nervously, then obeyed.

  The older sister was named Kinz, the younger brother was Alga and their shared family name was Chu. Cazia thought they were terrible names for two such beautiful people, but maybe they sounded better to their ears. Cazia wondered how her name sounded to them.

  The Coftin River was lazy, broad, and shallow. Cazia stared straight ahead; Ivy was keeping watch, so she would, too.

  But she also kept Kinz in her peripheral vision, watching her without seeming to. Once they were well beyond the dock and floating slowly toward the Northern Barrier, Cazia saw the older girl give her brother a quick, furtive look, and her smirking expression betrayed her.

  They fell for it, that expression said.

  Chapter 20

  By the fifth night, Cazia had become so accustomed to sleeping in trees that she almost slept through until dawn. Progress on the river was steady but slow, and that afternoon, the Poalos had dragged the raft onto a sizable island in the middle of the river. With hand gestures, they made it clear that the mud and weeds on the eastern bank would be impossible for their raft. For once, everyone had found an almost-comfortable spot in their own tree.

  Cazia was glad to be spending the ni
ght on the island. Everyone had told her to be afraid of the alligaunts but so far she hadn’t even seen one. Grass lions, however, she’d seen, and more than once. Sleeping in a tree wouldn’t protect her from them, but she hoped the water would.

  Something woke her. The moon was high and bright. She shifted uncomfortably and looked around. The river lapped against the stony shore of the island, and of course she could hear the constant, never-ending sound of the wind. Fire take that wind; she didn’t know how the herder clans could stand it. Had she been woken by a dream she couldn’t remember now, or was it something else?

  Cazia glanced over at Ivy, sleeping in the next tree. She was barely visible among the shadowed branches, but she appeared to be safe. By unspoken agreement, Kinz and Alga had chosen spots on the far side of Ivy so the little princess would be encircled. Cazia couldn’t see them through the branches and shadows, but she was glad they were there.

  Nothing seemed amiss. There didn’t appear to be anything moving on the ground below. The new-sprouting leaves above twirled in the moonlight. On the water, tiny ripples and eddies moved like moonlit string. The banks were too far to see in this light; the farther north they’d gone, the broader and slower the river became, leaving Cazia to wonder if she would even be able to tell when the river became the lake.

  It was beautiful.

  She rested her head in the notch of the trunk behind her, letting her eyelids grow heavy. A wake marked the spot where a stone came too near the water’s surface. She watched it for a moment, wondering at its size. Was it moving?

  She saw an unexpected blur of movement and a loud splash. Darkness moved against deeper darkness, and moonlight reflected off the splashing water. Something had swooped down into the river and now flapped skyward again. She jolted out of her comfortable spot for a better look.

  One of the giant eagles had just snatched something from the shallows at the edge of the island. Something big.

  Cazia had been too startled to cry out when it happened but she was tempted to do it now, just on general principle. The creature that had been carried away had not struggled. The bird’s sudden impact must have stunned or killed it outright. It was all too easy to imagine how an attack like that must feel. How swiftly she would go from a perfectly normal person traveling through the wilderness to a broken sack of dead flesh.

  She glanced at the next tree and saw Ivy’s face lit by moonlight. She stared with wide, frightened eyes.

  They both looked down at the water again. More wakes betrayed someone or something swimming away from the island. Neither girl slept any more that night.

  The sun came up shortly after, and Cazia was the first to climb down from her tree. Ivy strung her bow and nocked an arrow while her friend walked the length of the island, spear in hand. It only took a hundred paces or so to reach the far side--too quickly for Cazia to work the kinks out of her back and thighs. She wished she could ask the Poalos to check the tall grasses for her, but the only weapons the brother and sister had were their rafting poles, little hatchets, and the crude fishing spear they’d fashioned that first night. Cazia had no intention of surrendering her spear to them.

  But there were no creatures to be found. Her bow ready, Ivy climbed down. The Poalos followed. The servants looked worried and confused, which was only made worse by the little princess’s mimed explanation. The servants clearly wanted to leave immediately, but Ivy wouldn’t allow it.

  “One spot on this river is just as dangerous as any other,” she insisted, although only Cazia showed that she understood. “And I am hungry.”

  The snares the Poalos had set the night before had fish in them--nasty-looking things with triangular teeth and long, fleshy “whiskers”--and while Kinz started the fire, Alga gutted and scaled breakfast.

  Of course, Cazia could have lit the fire with a spell, but she wasn’t ready to betray herself. It was true that, except for that one fleeting expression, the servants had done nothing to earn her distrust—in fact, it had been so long that she’d begun to doubt her memory of it—but life in the palace had taught her to be cautious.

  And Alga... He had tried to be charming with her that first day, smiling at her and bringing her food, but Cazia had refused to look him in the eye. He’d taken the hint and left her alone since. Fire take him and the dreams she had about him.

  She paced the island once more, her spear making her feel foolish, but this time, she checked for muddy prints along the shoreline. She found one: a long, deep, three-toed print. It was shaped vaguely like a maple leaf, if one of the fronds had been pulled back for a thumb, and there was a sharp claw at the end of each toe.

  Worst of all, she found it on the near side of their raft, well back from the water’s edge. She bent low to search for more and was surprised to discover an odd pile of stones.

  It hadn’t formed naturally, and it certainly hadn’t been there the previous afternoon when they made camp. She knelt beside it. There were four small flat, smooth river stones of nearly equal size set beside each other with a fifth on top. To the right was a pair of stones with a third one leaning against the spot where they touched. Beside that was a pair of upright river stones leaned against each other, and there was the first, probably, a flat disk that had been pressed into the mud so it stood on edge.

  On the other side of the five-stone pile was a stack of seven stones, and beyond that--

  Kinz’s boot swept through the piles of stones, scattering them. “Nyoo!” she said. She’d learned the word no in Peradaini, but she couldn’t pronounce it correctly. “Nyoo nyoo!” She extended her arms and, elbows locked, opened and closed her clawed hands as though they were huge jaws filled with teeth.

  Cazia stood and backed away, her spear point toward the water. Did alligaunts make those stone piles? They returned toward the center of the island, where Alga held the skewered fish over the fire.

  He did not look at her, for which Cazia was both disappointed and grateful. Fire and Fury, he was annoying. Cazia slipped her hand into her pocket to take hold of her translation stone. She expected the servants to talk to each other, and she was right.

  “Scowler found something beside the raft.” Scowler was the name they had given her; she took a perverse pride in it. “A warning from the lakeboys.”

  “Lakeboys?” Alga almost dropped the skewer into the fire. “Already?”

  “Unmistakable.” She took a skewer from him and began to eat it. Gross. It was almost raw. “It used to be rare to see lakeboys so far from Low Lake, but not anymore. They wander the length and breadth of the waterways now.”

  “Do you think the girls understand?”

  Kinz glanced at Cazia and Ivy briefly. “They do. But Scowler is determined and the Princess will follow her anywhere, even to death. Of course, if you had managed to sweet-talk her...”

  “You should sweet-talk her,” Alga snapped. “She hates me and I haven’t even kissed her yet.”

  Cazia’s hand sprang open as though it had a mind of its own, and she could no longer understand what they were saying. Not that it mattered. Each time she had tried it, she’d heard nothing worse than the usual resentment she always heard from servants who thought no one was listening.

  Of course, translation stones were supposed to turn you into a gibbering fool if you used them too long, but so far she’d seen no sign of that. It was probably another of Doctor Twofin’s lies. Her instructor had been the one person outside Lar’s circle she’d actually trusted, but now... She didn’t like to think about it.

  The fish may have been the ugliest thing she’d ever seen but it tasted delicious. Ivy had some of her cracker bread with it, and Cazia ate a small bundle of meatbread. Kinz boiled a pot full of river water, and they all shared. It wasn’t safe to drink straight from the river, of course, but Cazia would have liked to make some kind of fish head broth from it, at least. Unfortunately, Ivy and the Poalos had been horrified by the idea.

  There were no lurking alligaunts beside the raft as they pushed off fr
om the island. Ivy kept her bow strung and an arrow nocked. Cazia sat with her spear across her knees, watching for suspicious wakes. She would have preferred her quiver of darts, but she wasn’t ready to reveal them. Not yet.

  While the girls watched the water, the Poalos watched the skies. Occasionally, they would see one of the huge eagles flying to the northeast--or returning from it--but that was becoming rare during the day. They seemed to do most of their hunting at night and only appeared in large numbers around sunset. As long as the Poalos made camp early and hid their fire, the four of them would be safe in the trees. Hopefully.

  Three days later, Cazia learned how to tell where the river ended and the lake began: the river narrowed between two hills and flowed over a little waterfall no taller than Ivy. The Poalos poled the raft toward the eastern shore and all four of them carried their supplies and the raft down the muddy hill. The shore was thick with three-toed prints but Kinz didn’t seem particularly worried about them and Ivy thought they were several days old.

  The waterfall proved to be made of flat river stones laid like unmortared bricks. It was crude compared to the stone walls of Peradain, but no one could mistake it for a natural formation. Ivy stared at it and stuck out her lower lip thoughtfully. “I wonder which clan built this.” There was no one to answer.

  The lake was surprisingly deep. The Poalos couldn’t pole along the shore as they normally did, because in most places, the drop was too steep. Instead, they were forced to paddle with the unbladed poles, a slow and exhausting process. Cazia watched a family of yellow-striped boqs emerge from the tall grass to drink at the water’s edge. She was about to suggest they abandon the raft and walk the rest of the way when a grass lion pounced on the youngest of the boqs, scattering the rest.

  As they moved northward, the cliffs of the Northern Barrier loomed above them, higher with each day that went by. Hent had been right; there was no pass to take them into the Qorr Valley. For as far as Cazia could see in either direction--and her vision was excellent--the mountainside was a slick, shining wall.