The Way Into Chaos

by Harry Connolly

  Luckily, the distance between the girls and the warriors had been great enough that they couldn’t immediately overtake their “prey.” Cazia’s old self would have hated that word, but her new one found it interesting. The insides of Chik’s shell had been so unappetizing; if she found a way to make a soup out of him or roasted him inside his shell, would he have become the prey?

  She suddenly remembered Doctor Whitestalk back at the tower, cutting open songbirds and tasting them. Cazia wasn’t there yet. Even if she couldn’t feel kindness or concern any more, at least she knew that she should fake it.

  “Pace yourselves,” she said. “The bugs are sprinters, remember? We can keep ahead of them as long as we don’t exhaust ourselves.”

  They all slowed a bit, for which Cazia was grateful. Better to save their energy in case they stumbled upon more warriors or, worse, one of the so-called “riding beasts.”

  Passage, Chik had said. For a few moments, she couldn’t imagine what he’d meant. He had one warning to shout to his people, and--

  Of course! Passage out of the valley. The Tilkilit were trapped here with the Great Terror, unable to move into the larger continent. They were looking for deeper soil, which was probably a euphemism for a decent latrine.

  Kinz took a left turn, which seemed wrong to Cazia, but this wasn’t the time to argue. They ran through a deep, crooked ravine Cazia didn’t recognize. Tapping echoed all around them, but it was impossible to tell if it was coming from in front or behind. Then, without warning, the sound came from directly above.

  Five Tilkilit warriors had crested the ridge above and a little behind them. The warriors were too high to leap all the way to the bottom of the ravine, but they bounded down the slope, spears in hand.

  Ivy nocked an arrow. Kinz shuffled back with her spear, holding it upright. Cazia had already drawn five iron darts from her quiver and started her spell. The Tilkilit were coming upon them so quickly, she might not have time to get the spell off, but Great Way, it felt so right to be doing magic again.

  Ivy loosed an arrow just as one of the warriors stepped off the side of the hill. The shot took it low on its torso, punching through the front of its shell and poking out the back. The creature collapsed on the hillside and struck hard against the stones. The distant, analytical part of Cazia’s mind thought Ivy’s arrow might not have killed it, but that impact surely had.

  Then her spell finished and her five darts flew from her hands. Each punched through a warrior’s torso with tremendous force, including the one Ivy had already felled. The magic felt so natural, she thought she could have shot every dart in her quiver at once without missing. She could never have done that before she Cursed herself. How envious Lar would be to see her now.

  There was another series of taps from the top of the ravine. A warrior at the crest of the hill was sending a complex message to the others, but Cazia didn’t bother reaching for her stone to translate it. Whatever the warrior was saying, her tactic would be the same: run.

  Ivy shot an arrow at him, but at this distance, whether it hit or not was doubtful. They turned and ran along the ravine. Within a few moments, stones began to rain down from above. Cazia glanced back and saw two creatures taking stones from the pouches at their side--stones without slings, she suddenly remembered--and throwing them.

  Great Way, they hit the ground around her with such force. The Tilkilit were strong enough that they didn’t have to bother with slings. Cazia began to run in an uneven pattern, hopping onto one side of the ravine or the other, running down the center at varied paces. The warriors might still get lucky, but--

  Kinz cried out in sudden pain, then dropped the spear and stumbled. Ivy called out Cazia’s name, and they could both see immediately how she’d been injured. A stone had struck high on her back where the pack was nothing more than two layers of thin leather. Her right arm dangled uselessly.

  The smart thing would have been to leave her behind. She was a liability now--actually, how many Tilkilit had she managed to kill on her own? None, as far as Cazia knew. Yes, it was nice to have someone to collect firewood, but that seemed to be all she was good for. There was no reason to die for a servant.

  But Ivy ducked under Kinz’s good arm and supported her. Cazia sighed. What did any of this matter, anyway? The only thing that mattered--

  A shadow swept over them with the speed of a blinking eye, and sudden frantic tapping echoed through the canyons. The rain of stones stopped immediately. The Great Terror had found them. Cazia looked up but couldn’t see anything except clouds and stone. Where--

  Another raptor passed over them with the speed of an arrow in flight. If one of them flew the length of the ravine at that speed toward them, she would never have time to cast a spell.

  She ran back and picked up Kinz’s spear. It was her spear, really, but Kinz had been the one who carried it, so-- She shook those thoughts off. Focus on survival. Even if she didn’t have time to cast a spell, she could hold a spear upright.

  Ivy didn’t have the strength to hold Kinz upright for long, but the servant quickly found her feet and jogged along the bottom of the ravine.

  At the next juncture, they stumbled into a widened place in the canyon floor with three paths to choose from.

  “By Inzu,” Kinz said, “I made us lost.”

  Liability. “We need to keep heading southeast,” Cazia said. “Narrow ravines would be best.”

  “That one, then,” Ivy said. “How fast can you move across that open ground?”

  “Watch me.” She ran across the stony ground with her left hand holding her right arm against her torso.

  Cazia ran close behind the other two, looking up often to check the sky. There were birds above them, circling lazily, but the girls had not yet drawn their attention. Kinz gasped and groaned with every step, and when they reached the far side of the open area, she collapsed in the shadow of a huge overhanging boulder.

  “We must get this off you.” Ivy eased the backpack off Kinz’s injured shoulder but it was too heavy for her to lift. Cazia didn’t need to be asked. She slung it on. They couldn’t leave their food or bedrolls behind, after all. It didn’t seem terribly heavy, but maybe that was because they were running low on everything.

  Now that Cazia had the food, it was time to decide when she would abandon Ivy and Kinz to strike out on her own. She had fourteen darts left in her quiver. She’d lost the five she shot in the ravine and one from several days before that Kinz had not been able to find. As a rough estimate, she’d seen forty warriors by the portal, with who knows how many more still behind the ridge.

  Ivy’s quiver held eight arrows. Not enough. Not enough.

  Kinz pulled her shirt all the way up to her neck. There was a white circle over her shoulder blade, with a growing red rim around it.

  “Oh, Kinz,” Ivy said, dismay clear in her voice.

  Sweat ran down Kinz’s face. “I think I need to make the sling.”

  For once, Ivy was at a loss. “Finally,” Cazia said, drawing her knife. “Something your uncles didn’t teach you.” No one had taught Cazia, either, but she’d seen it done. She plunged her knife into the hem of her skirt and cut off a long strip of cotton fabric. She wrapped it around Kinz’s ribs, binding her upper arm to her side. Then she looped it around the older girl’s wrist and, pulling it tight, tied it off at the back of her neck.

  Cazia felt tears on her cheeks again. The others seemed to mistake it for sympathy or empathy, but the sorrow had nothing to do with her.

  Shadows swooped over them, heading north and west. They had lingered too long. There was more tapping, and she took the blue stone from her pocket again. “Wizard! Capture!” were the words they said over and--

  A Tilkilit warrior fell hard onto the stony ground just behind them. The sound startled them all, and as they crouched in the shadow of the boulder above, a raptor swooped down on it.

  It was facing away, giving them all a view of its impressive tail feather fan. Then another bird sh
rieked, and the stone in Cazia’s hand translated the sound.

  “Don’t touch the ground!”

  How interesting. The huge bird scooped up the little warrior in one talon, then flapped away.

  “Inzu’s breath,” Kinz said.

  “I have bad news,” Cazia said. She held up the stone. “The birds talk to each other, too.”

  “We must keep moving,” Ivy said. Kinz rolled to her feet and, after checking the sky above them, started along the ravine again.

  From somewhere nearby, they heard a tremendous crashing sound, like an avalanche. Run. Run.

  The ravine curved slightly to the northeast, then, after a hundred paces, doglegged around a spur and ran back toward the west like the shaft of a spear, with no turnoffs they could see. It would lead them right back to the thick of the Tilkilit.

  All three of them circled back the way they came. Two raptors swooped through the area the girls had just run through, and a swarm of stones flew upwards at them, driving them back. Cazia had already pocketed her translation stone, so she couldn’t understand the staccato tapping and screeching, but she didn’t care. Fire and Fury, there were a lot of warriors back there.

  They couldn’t double back. But if this path would take them nearer the enemy...

  “We must continue down the ravine,” Ivy said.

  “No,” Cazia said. “We continue eastward... There. We go up that rockslide and over to the other side.”

  “But we will be exposed on the ridge!” the princess said.

  Without further discussion, Kinz started up the rockslide, loose stones rolling behind her. She needed the head start, too, because the slope was steep enough that they all needed their hands to keep their balance, and Kinz struggled the most.

  Cazia reached the top of the ridge first. There, to the east, was a beautiful green landscape, and they only had one more ridge to cross to reach it.

  Fire and Fury, there were birds everywhere: twenty, at least, flying from farther out in the valley toward them.

  One of them changed direction toward her. Finally. She tossed the spear aside and began to cast a spell just as Ivy and Kinz came up beside her.

  The power built within her, easing her emptiness and soothing her false sorrow. She had secretly hoped for this when she’d started up the ridge. The empty space inside her almost tingled at the idea of casting another spell, especially something harmful.

  It would be fire this time. Why waste the darts? But as she cast it, some part of her understood at a visceral level how it could be changed. She curled two of her fingers more than she was supposed to, and changed her thoughts to match.

  The spell finished before the bird was in range, but she released it anyway. The flames flew from her as a bolt rather than a jet, as though she’d catapulted a pulse of burning oil.

  The bolt struck the raptor full on its belly, fire washing back over its torso. It veered away, shrieking in pain and dismay in a way that Cazia didn’t need a blue stone to translate. Thick black smoke trailed behind it.

  Everyone will see that.

  “Cazia! Come on!”

  Let them fear me.

  “Cazia!”

  Cazia looked back at the princess, and something in her expression made the girl gasp and step back, almost toppling down the steep hill.

  I promised to protect her. There was nothing inside her that cared a whit for old promises, but still. With the Tilkilit and the raptors, she had no way of getting to the portal now, and nothing to live for. If she took the girl over the mountains, Ivy’s people would surely want to come back in force. That portal might give them access to the Evening People and their Gifts.

  And Cazia would lead the way.

  Ivy and Kinz struggled down the hill at an angle. Cazia glanced at the sky. The raptors were giving her a lot of space, swooping down into a nearby ravine in waves, swerving away from volley after volley of stones. She couldn’t see Chik’s people, but the fighting seemed to be closer.

  She grabbed the spear and jumped down toward Ivy and Kinz. Loose stones slid from beneath her feet and she fell on her side, scraping her left leg. It didn’t hurt much--in fact, the pain felt good, almost like a second spark from Fury--but it wasn’t likely to inspire fear in others.

  Was that what her sorrow had become? An urge to kill and be known for killing? Interesting.

  The Great Terror were making a horrendous racket, and the showers of stones hitting the ground made a sound like she’d never heard before, almost like a sudden burst of rain.

  As the three of them crossed the bottom of the ravine and struggled up the other side, one of those volleys of stones fell just off to their left. Cazia noted that the rocks were jagged gray stones just like the ones they were climbing over. Clearly, the warriors had run out of the special dark, smooth stones in their pouches.

  “They are getting closer,” Ivy gasped. Cazia stopped often to check the sky, as much because she wanted another chance to cast her new spell as out of concern for their safety.

  Four of the raptors left the maze of ravines, flapping out over the forest and gaining height. Cazia couldn’t see where they were going, but she heard that avalanche sound again...except it didn’t sound like an avalanche any more.

  They finally reached the last ridge. The other side was a longer, gentler slope, but it was covered with scraggly bramble and thorny vines. Reaching the misty green forest beyond wasn’t going to be simple.

  “Tree,” Kinz said, and hobbled southward down the slope. There was a single tree growing just below the top of the ridge, lonely, twisted, and blackened by fire. Cazia and Ivy followed.

  Afternoon sun had burned off enough of the fog that the treetops of the forest were visible above the upper layer. The place Chik had led them into the network of ravines was south of them now; they could see swirls of mist retreating from the warm air blowing from it.

  “Oh!” Ivy exclaimed. She pointed out into the forest mists. A treetop suddenly rose up out of the fog and fell to the side. Then another one. The sound of a tremendous, crashing avalanche, which before had seemed to come from everywhere, echoed from the forest.

  Something was moving out there in the fog, and this time they knew it could not be a Tilkilit squad. Whatever it was, it was big.

  Kinz fell against the tree trunk, panting. She was the strongest of them, but her injury was exhausting her. Ivy, too, was flagging. Cazia knelt beside them. She realized she should have been more tired than either of them, then immediately noticed the ache in her lungs and weariness in her legs. Odd that she couldn’t feel her own pain without actively thinking about it.

  While they caught their breath in the shadow of the tree, Cazia tried to consider their options. The vine towers they’d used to descend into the valley were a day or two east of them, far out into the forest. Not only would they have to escape the Tilkilit to reach them, they’d have to avoid whatever was crashing around in the fog. And the protection the vines would provide from the raptors was chancy. But they certainly couldn’t climb the rock face; the Great Terror would pluck them like jars of compote on a pantry shelf.

  The only other option was to create another tunnel. They would be safe from the raptors, but casting that spell that many times would utterly destroy her.

  Part of her wanted that.

  “We have to chance the forest,” Cazia said.

  “I can climb,” Kinz said. “Do not leave me behind. I can still make it.”

  Ivy clutched her hand. “Of course we won’t leave you behind!”

  Kinz shot a hard look at Cazia. There was no use pretending she wasn’t considering it, but fine. All three would escape together, if they could. Cazia nodded.

  There was another terrifying rumble, and the mists swirled to the south. Whatever it was, it was heading to block the entrance to the ravines.

  Then, in the space where the warm winds blowing into the forests pushed back the fog, they saw it. The soil swelled up--looking suddenly very like the long mound of loos
e earth they’d climbed over—then broke apart and fell to either side. From beneath, a massive brown cylinder pushed partway out of the ground.

  At first, Cazia had no idea what she was looking at. It looked almost like a stack of squat clay pots tipped on its side. It lifted up at the center, body curling as it dragged more segments out of the soil. It toppled trees, turf, and stone.

  Then the near end broke free and raised up into the air.

  It was a mouth. The end of it was all mouth.

  The rim was surrounded by what looked to be teeth, but after a moment, Cazia realized they were moving like stubby, knuckle-less fingers grasping at the air. They move the dirt into its mouth, she realized. It’s a huge worm.

  The inside of the mouth reflected sunlight with a weird rainbow sheen, and fluid sloshed around in the bottom of its inflexible jaw. Insect warriors ran alongside it, many scooping stones off the ground. A few, dressed in white sashes, scaled the side of the worm in huge bounds and clung to the top like sailors balancing on a capsized boat.

  “Riding beasts,” Cazia said.

  Chapter 27

  The Tilkilit’s huge, burrowing monster was simply fascinating.

  Kinz fell back behind the tree, clutching at her mouth as though stifling a scream. Ivy crouched behind her, fumbling at her little quiver. Both had clearly been struck with terror at the sight of the thing, not to mention the swarm of warriors accompanying it. There must have been a hundred Tilkilit at least, with more streaming out of the forest with every breath.

  But to Cazia, it was all just a curiosity. Had the worms come through the portal? They must have, and it must have been a tight fit. What did a creature like that eat? What would it be like to be devoured by that gigantic mouth? Was it just another gateway to a new world?

  “Get down!” Ivy snapped, grabbing Cazia’s sleeve and dragging her behind the dubious cover of a thicket.

  “By Inzu,” Kinz said, “we will all make to die here, just as Mahz said.”

  “No, we will not,” Ivy said. “I have an idea.”