The Way Into Chaos

by Harry Connolly

  “Enough,” Cazia said. She was holding the blue stone and, although Chik was unable to understand her, he recognized her tone. He clicked his claws twice to indicate his contempt, then fell silent.

  “He never shuts up, does he?” Kinz asked. She had held the stone for a few minutes while Cazia had taken and discarded Chik’s weapons, a copper-bladed spear, a pouch of smooth, dark stones without a sling, and a flanged club worn where a human might wear a dagger. It was the only time Kinz had listened to him, and she’d refused to take the stone since.

  “I think I understand,” Cazia said. When did her voice get so flat? “They talk in smells, and all this information is released in a single stink. Each odor is complicated by a dozen substances, see? But for us, each piece of information has to be turned into a word and strung out in long phrases. That’s why he’s insulted that we shorten his name, because it’s not actually shorter to him, just simplified.”

  “Give him the stone,” Ivy said. “I will explain this to him.”

  “No, do not,” Kinz said. “It will just give him another opportunity to tell us how superior he is.”

  Kinz, who had signed on to this mission as a servant, was now giving orders. It would have bothered Cazia once.

  She picked up the blue stone again. In her odd state, the warrior’s words seemed to echo in her head. Had she used it for an hour yet? The other girls knew to warn her if she started talking gibberish, but what if the effect came on suddenly? Would going hollow increase the danger or reduce it? Or was this another of Doctor Twofin’s scare stories? So many interesting questions.

  A shadow passed over the ravine floor. A raptor. Cazia and the others were well hidden among the trees, but they retreated to a dense stand anyway.

  She set the stone down beside Chik; they’d already learned it wouldn’t work if both of them held it at the same time. The creature picked it up with its clumsy claws, and Cazia spoke. “No names, understand? Just tell us how long you have been here and where you come from.”

  He set it down and she picked it up. “My people have been here for two hundred plus sixteen plus three days, although I suspect you apes will not be able to understand a number of such complexity. We fight, always, without reinforcements, and are unable to find deeper soil. Our empire--which has a name that would boggle your mammalian brains--is far to the south of here, where the weather is warmer and the soil, grass, and trees are orange. A warrior could march eastward and return years later from the west, without ever setting foot outside our empire.”

  Cazia repeated that and Ivy became convinced Chik came from a globe-spanning continent beyond the sea. Cazia thought it was more likely that he was lying to make himself seem important, and Kinz refused to accept that the world could be round.

  It was midday. Cazia decided they shouldn’t risk the translation stone any more. Kinz and Ivy slipped out of the grove to find a squirrel or something to eat, and Cazia tried to create a basic sign language with their prisoner, just as Ivy’s people had with the serpents, but he had no interest in that at all.

  Chik ate almost continually, taking tiny portions of crusty stuff from a pouch at its shoulder. Kinz had initially demanded he turn his rations over to them, but he warned them he could only speak if he had access to his food, and they relented.

  The girls took turns standing guard over him through the night. Cazia would have liked some rope to tie his legs with, but they hadn’t brought any. Chik, although smaller than Ivy, was stronger than any of them; woven grasses wouldn’t do the trick.

  In the middle of the night, Cazia woke to voices. Ivy was explaining the history of her bow--that it had been made for her by her mother as per family tradition. They were just shapes in the darkness, sitting as far from each other as visibility of the thinned-out fog allowed.

  “What’s going on?” Cazia interrupted.

  “Chik doesn’t understand where my bow came from,” Ivy answered. “I keep telling him that the women in my family have been making them for generations, but he keeps asking who taught us.”

  “You’re wasting your breath,” Cazia said. “He’s asking what non-human creature taught you. He doesn’t believe apes are smart enough to create them, and you’re never going to get past that contempt.”

  Chik shifted his position slightly, and Cazia knew what he was going to do before he did it. The blue jewel landed beside her in the wet dirt, and it only took a few moments for her to find it and pick it up.

  “How did you apes get into this valley?” Chik asked, once again posing the question they’d agreed to never answer. “You have no wings. You have no burrowing tools. Mighty serpents make the water impassable. You certainly could not climb over the mountains with the smooth cliffs and Great Terror above.” The Great Terror were the huge eagles.

  The old Cazia would have said the Great Terror regularly let her people ride on their backs in exchange for pretty shells or something equally snide, but she’d burned that part of herself away. So instead, she tossed the jewel to him and asked him a question in return. “How did your people come to the Door in the Mountain and this valley?”

  He returned the jewel and answered, “We were brought here by the Great Way.”

  Cazia couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

  In the dark, tears flowed down her cheeks for no reason she could understand, and they stopped for no reason, too. The alien sorrow and longing ebbed and flowed; she could do nothing but ride it out and wonder what it all meant.

  Lying at the edge of the fog, Cazia saw dawn light the tops of the peaks ahead, and she woke them all. At first, Chik refused to leave the cover of the trees, but the point of Kinz’s spear drove him forward. They quickly realized that he was extremely nearsighted; once they assured him there were no Great Terror nearby, he ran with them.

  They found scrub and a few scattered trees in the ravines between the ridges, and hurried from one piece of cover to the next. Chik could cover ground quickly but had little stamina, so they rested often. Whenever the path reached a fork, the warrior would point one direction or another, sometimes leading them over loose rockfalls, sometimes through ravines so steep they were practically tunnels.

  Cazia remembered the way the other warriors had leaped when she fought them. He could have escaped from them at any time. Why didn’t he?

  “Who has the jewel?” Ivy asked. They had taken shelter beneath a rocky overhang while Chik ate and rested for another sprint.

  “I do,” Cazia answered.

  “Okay. Are we sure he is not trying to melg us?” Ivy became annoyed at the look they gave her. “Melg,” she insisted. “Kinz is the one who thought of it first. Could he be trying to melg us?”

  Kinz sighed. “What language are you speaking?”

  “Peradaini,” Ivy snapped. “And I speak it very well, thank you.”

  Cazia put her hand on Kinz’s. “It’s not her fault. Ivy, you’ve been talking to him too much. You’re saying melg when you mean trick.” Ivy’s hands went to her mouth and throat. “It’ll go away in a few days, if you get enough sleep. But no more holding the stone for a while.”

  She nodded, her lips pressed together.

  “I still think he is trying to melg us,” Kinz said.

  Cazia didn’t laugh. “I don’t think he’s clever enough for trickery. He hasn’t even tried to escape. As arrogant and obnoxious as he is, he seems to do whatever he’s told out of habit.”

  Chik signaled and they rounded a long rockfall and came to another, shallower overhang. Chik crouched low inside it. Still, it was not much cover, and Cazia scanned the high places all around them. They’d come very close to the base of the northern mountain range—if this wasn’t the place where the ranges met, it had to be a short distance behind them. The ravine widened here, opening up into a broad slope of loose rock. She couldn’t see any Great Terrors flying nearby, but the rocks were nearly the same color as their feathers. If one was perched above--

  “By Inzu,” Kinz said. “Have
I gone wind-mad, or is that the hole in the world?”

  Cazia turned toward them. Kinz, Ivy, and Chik were all looking down the rocky slope toward a collapsed spot at the base of the mountainside. She followed their gaze.

  A disk of light hovered near the bottom of the rocky slope, and it was identical to the one she’d seen in the palace during the Festival.

  Fury’s spark, still burning within her, seemed to grow warm. She expected to see The Blessing come charging through the disk at any moment, but they didn’t. It just floated there in the air, unmoving.

  Tears ran down her cheeks again, but the longing within her felt different somehow. Not that it mattered.

  Chik was making a terrible smell, and Kinz caught Cazia’s wrist even before she realized she was reaching for her translation stone. “We can not have two of you speaking gibberish. I have hardly talked to him at all, so it is my turn.” She dug the stone out of Cazia’s pocket and knelt beside Chik.

  The stink washed over them all. “He says that is the Door in the Mountain,” Kinz told them. “He said the other side appeared inside the old storeroom one day, a magic door to new lands. His unit came through and marched up this very slope. The door stayed open for only nine days plus one--hmph. Ten days. Why can he not just say ‘ten’?”

  Ten days. The Festival lasted ten days because the portal in Peradain lasted that long.

  “He says it changes every ten days. Now the hot dry wind blows from it. Before, there was a poisonous smoke. Before that, snow. Sometimes creatures will come through and die choking, as though the air is poison. There is the puddle at the bottom of the hill from one such--it did not rot, just turned into the fluid that will not evaporate.”

  Cazia saw a little pool at the base of the slope, glinting black in the reflected light.

  “Once, soon after he arrived, he says the jet of fresh water shot through. He said it was cold as glaciers and completely... I don’t know that word. Without life. Ten days later, the water began to flow back through the hole. Many of his brothers were swept away.

  “It changes constantly. Chik’s people have been trapped in the valley since they arrived, and they check every ten days to see if the other side of the Door once again opens in their home. Once, they saw a landscape of wriggling worms. Once, they saw a storm of fire and lightning. Once, they could not even look through the opening, because a great eye on a stalk from a creature much too large to fit through the Door had come to peer at them.

  “Then, forty days ago, the Great Terror emerged. They hunt his people, destroying their... I do not know that word. Riding beasts. They would drop stones or fallen trees from the sky and devour the corpses of the Bearers and Masters.”

  While all this about the Great Terror was important to Chik, Cazia thought it was a waste of time. “Kinz, stop him so we can ask him the question.”

  Kinz clicked her tongue to get Chik’s attention. Then she gave him the stone.

  Cazia said, “Have you seen mammals come through? They would have been larger than us, with purple fur. Have you heard of a race of peace-loving mammals called ‘the Evening People’? “

  Chik tried to hand the stone back to Cazia, but Kinz intercepted it. “No, he hasn’t,” she said. “He says the Tilkilit would have defeated enemies like those easily.”

  Cazia didn’t know what to think. This opening obviously looked like the one in Peradain, and it connected his land to another land far away for ten days at a time, but the one in Peradain only appeared for ten days, then vanished. This one persisted, changing from place to place.

  The Tilkilit had not come through at the urging of a third party, which is what would have happened if they were part of an organized attack on Kal-Maddum. But, of course, they had been here for months; it was the Great Terror who had come through at the same time as The Blessing.

  But was there a connection between them? It seemed increasingly like a terrible coincidence.

  She looked back at the glowing disk, and the longing in her suddenly surged. That was what she wanted...no, what the magic in her wanted. The emptiness inside her ached for that portal and she knew that, once she entered it, there would never be another tear, not for her. No more sorrow. No more longing.

  “We have our answers, do we not?” Ivy said. “We wanted to discover where the giant birds came from and whether they were connected to The Blessing. I think it is pretty clear the answers are ‘there’ and ‘no’.”

  “I have to enter the Door.” Cazia was as shocked to hear herself say it as the other two were to hear it. “Don’t say anything right away. Just listen. Kinz is correct about one thing: the magic I’ve done has changed me. I have been destroyed and there’s no cure.”

  Ivy gaped at her. “I do not understand.”

  “To get here, I broke every rule about magic there is. I ignored my teacher’s first lesson, and to be honest, I did it on purpose, just because I hate to be told something is not allowed. But that old me is dead. I’m hollow. I’m Cursed.” Cazia looked frankly at Ivy. “I can’t even love anyone anymore, not even you.” Ivy began to cry, and Cazia felt no response other than a mild satisfaction that she had correctly predicted the girl’s response. “That part of me has been taken over by emptiness, and that emptiness is calling out to that Door the way the smell of roasting meat calls to a starving child. I’m just not strong enough to resist, even if I wanted to.”

  “We will make you resist,” Kinz said.

  “You’re a servant,” Cazia told her. “Mind your place.”

  Ivy spoke up. “I’m a princess—”

  “Not my princess.”

  “And soon I will be a queen, wife to your own cousin—”

  “None of that means anything to me now.”

  “Cazia, you can not do this! You came here to find answers, and you must bring them back to the outside world.”

  “You can bring the answers back. I have new questions to pursue.”

  Kinz shook her head. “You blocked the passage, remember?”

  Cazia glanced down the slope at the disk. How could she explain this feeling in a way they would understand? It was a sacred urge, as though her new, ruined self had rediscovered its temple.

  Maybe, Cazia thought, if she stepped through the Door in the Mountain, she would travel the Great Way and emerge from the other side as herself. Maybe she could leave her Curse inside.

  At the far end of the rocky slope, a neat line of reddish-black figures marched down the slope. Cazia’s hand went to her quiver and drew out an iron dart even before she recognized them as more of the Tilkilit. They fanned out in neat order, marching down the hill toward the disk, their weapons and attention directed toward the skies for the most part.

  Forty days, Chik had said. The Door in the Mountain changed every ten days, so of course the Tilkilit had come to check it today.

  If there had ever been a moment when Cazia could have bolted from their hiding place and reached the disk before the warriors did, that moment was already gone. She knew how strong they were, had seen them jump, and she had no illusions that her magic could handle so many, even if she’d had fog to conceal herself, which she didn’t.

  Better to wait. They would check the portal and retreat, probably. She could return to her temple then.

  They all heard a loud, sharp tap--a Tilkilit commander giving orders, Cazia assumed--and she noticed Chik lean forward to grab a wedge-shaped rock in one clawed hand. Cazia grabbed Kinz’s arm and pulled her out of the away just as Chik swung for her head.

  Cazia stabbed the dart into his chest just below his arm. Her hand slipped at the impact--the weapon had no handle or hilt--but the point broke through Chik’s shell and plunged deep into his flesh anyway.

  Fury give me the urgency I need. Chik fell backward, his hard shell scraping along the metal dart, and a terrible plume of stink billowing out of him. Slime coated Cazia’s fingers, but it didn’t bother her. She threw herself onto the warrior, raising the dart for a killing stroke, when Chik s
napped his jaws together twice, quickly.

  The sound echoed against the cavern walls. Cazia plunged the dart into Chik’s head, missing his eye but breaking through his “skull.” He died instantly.

  She had felt so proud when she’d killed The Blessing and she’d felt such grief after. Now she had killed a warrior up close, someone she’d spoken with, and the only effect she felt was the urge to kill again.

  “He said, Passage,” Kinz whispered. She was still holding the blue stone. Cazia took it from her and began to creep backward toward the ravine. The warriors had turned toward their general direction, but they didn’t seem to be facing them directly. Cazia knew she hadn’t killed Chik quickly enough, but if the other warriors’ vision was as bad as his--

  She heard a short series of clicks that her jewel translated as “War! Hunt! Prey!” and the warriors at the front of the column leaped toward them.

  Chapter 26

  There was no time for creeping, hiding, or casting a spell. Cazia hissed, “Come!” and the three girls bolted out of cover and ran back up the ravine.

  “They are gaining!” Ivy shouted, glancing behind her.

  “Do not look back!” Kinz shouted.

  “Be quiet!” Cazia snapped. Had they forgotten the Tilkilit were practically blind? They should be able to lose them in the twisted ravines.

  “I remember the way,” Kinz said, more quietly this time. She and Ivy took the lead, despite the fact that they were carrying weapons. Their fear of being caught urged them on, almost leaving Cazia behind.

  She didn’t have their survival instinct. She wasn’t afraid or angry. Given a choice, she would have circled around to the portal--oh, how the empty space inside her longed for it--but that would have been suicide. She still had a chance to enter the Door in the Mountain, but first she would have to survive.

  All they needed to do was put some distance between themselves and the warriors. Chik’s people could sprint at astonishing speeds and could leap into a third-story window, but they had no endurance.