The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way

by Harry Connolly

  “How many of you have lost family to the Twofins?” Lowtower said. “How many more if we do not stop these madmen here? Shields high, do you hear?”

  Tejohn wanted to be at the front of that line, but he had no shield or spear of his own, and no confidence that the soldiers wouldn’t knife him in the back on general principle. Instead, he lingered near the door.

  “When I open, Pik, you charge forward. Hard.” Commander Lowtower lifted the latch and threw his shoulder against it. It moved a hand’s width before banging to a stop. He pushed again and again but came up against the same barrier each time.

  “Is it barred?” Redegg called from the end of the hall.

  “No.” Lowtower pushed against it with all his strength, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  Tejohn stepped forward and looked through the narrow gap between the open door and the jamb. He could see pink granite from top to bottom.

  “He’s blocked it,” Tejohn said. He paced back and forth. “Bluepetal, was this blocked when you made a delivery here?”

  “No,” the merchant called, “but I have not been here for some eleven days.”

  Tejohn paced walked up and down the hall. Twofin could be right inside this room. The question was: had Doctor Twofin fled here after his brother’s death and blocked the door from the inside, or did he block the door every time he left the room unattended, knowing he could shatter those stones easily when he returned?

  In other words, was the man behind this door right now?

  Tejohn was suddenly certain that the three sisters had lied to him—how could he have been so thick not to have seen it immediately? Tejohn should have forced them to come along and call to Doctor Twofin through the door. It probably wouldn’t work on a hollowed-out scholar, but it was better than standing here watching soldiers strain at a door.

  Fire and Fury, he was supposed to slip quietly through the pass with Javien, and thanks to a moment of bad luck, he’d lost everything: his companion, his anonymity, and his escort into the Sweeps. Now he was stuck in Twofin’s holdfast, searching for an old colleague in hopes he could kill the man quickly.

  But there was too much he didn’t know. How extensive were these tunnels? How many troops were down here, and how many on the surface? Was there a back door into Doctor Twofin’s room?

  Doctor Rexler killed more than a hundred men and women before he could be stopped.

  Tejohn moved westward along the hall. The far end was completely open, although here the wall extended several feet beyond the spot where the floor ended. Was there another gallery on the other side of this wall? Tejohn wanted to climb out and see for himself, but the stone was slick and the drop terrifying. They’d already descended several levels, but from here it looked like the same dizzying height.

  “My tyr!” Lowtower called to him. Tejohn spun and hurried toward him, through the parted column of spears. “Part of the wall must have collapsed here.”

  There was indeed a hole in the stone wall just at shoulder height. It was vaguely rectangular, as though a stone mason had come along and cleaned up the edges. Inside the hole was a beautifully built wooden shutter, exactly the right size to be wedged in place.

  Tejohn pressed his hand against it; it didn’t wobble or bulge, and of course, there was no way to know if there was more granite behind it. He glanced at the spears nearby and knew instantly that he was not going to call for an axe. They had no one to send for it but these soldiers, and all of them looked like they would acknowledge the order, march down the hall, and never return.

  They had fear in their eyes. They were poorly trained, and not a one of them measured up to the spears who died at Pinch Hall. Worse yet, before he went hollow, Doctor Twofin was twice the scholar that jumped-up house servant Rexler could ever be.

  There was nothing to be done about it now. Tejohn’s urge for killing was on him, driving him forward. He stood close to the wall and slammed his short sword against a plank in the middle of the shutter. The wood cracked a bit but did not break completely. He bashed it again and again, the noise mimicking the anger in his guts. The edge dulled but did not shatter. Good steel. Anyway, with a sword, it was the point that mattered.

  The sound of his hammering echoed within the rock tunnel. Everyone within a thousand feet could hear it, but Tejohn didn’t care. This hole was too small for him—or anyone with him—to crawl through, but he would be able to see if the wizard was there, at least.

  The wood splintered, showing the dim light of the fading day. This room was open to the sky and the wind, too.

  He kept swinging, ignoring the faint scent of blood and rotting meat. No one tried to help. Tejohn did not look at the other soldiers; he didn’t want to see their expressions again.

  Finally, the whole shutter snapped in half, flew into the room, and clattered on the floor. Lowtower moved toward him, but the commander was not quite tall enough to see through the gap.

  Tejohn leaned forward, slowly edging closer to the newly-made window. Fire and Fury, the smell was awful. He half expected to take an iron dart in his eye at any moment, but someone had to look.

  Something small and dark leaped onto the stone ledge. It was dark brown and not even as long as a man’s forearm. Then it spread its wings and opened its tiny fanged mouth to shriek. The men at the end of the hall cried out in surprise and fear.

  Reeling back, Tejohn thrust his sword at it even as it launched itself into the air. It was so fast, he couldn’t catch more than that fleeting glimpse, but even so he could tell there was something terribly wrong about it.

  It wriggled left, avoiding the tip of Tejohn’s short sword, but he lunged after it and swung downward, swatting it to the floor. It struck with a wet smack, and Commander Lowtower pierced it with his spear, killing it instantly with a fine, accurate jab.

  The soldiers cried out in terror once again; through the open gallery at the western end of the corridor, they could see more of the little beasts fly out over the lake, escaping through the open gallery into the wilderness.

  Lowtower withdrew the point of his spear. He and Tejohn both bent low to examine the creature. “Kelvijinian guide us,” the commander said.

  It was as Tejohn had feared. When scholars went hollow, their magic didn’t simply become more powerful; they also began to do new and terrifying things with it. And Doctor Oskol Twofin had been a medical scholar, well versed in the functions of living beings.

  The creature had been a rat once. It was large for its size, with dark brown fur and the usual pale hairless tail. Twofin had added wings to its back. The place where the joint of the wing and the backbone met was utterly unmarked with scar or stitch, as though the beast had been born that way.

  And, at the end of its forelegs, looking brown from the sun and faintly shriveled, was a pair of tiny human hands. Given his freedom for barely a cycle of the moon, and Doctor Twofin had already murdered small children for their parts.

  Chapter 5

  “Commander,” Tejohn said in a low voice, “get to the cells, wherever they are, and find your children.”

  Lowtower looked up at Tejohn in shock. “You think...”

  “No. Probably not. The most likely thing is that these hands were taken from debt children. The old tyr wouldn’t want to lose valuable hostages, yes? So the scholar’s victims are probably servants. If the tyr knew what his brother was up to.”

  “And if he didn’t?”

  Doctor Twofin will lose more than his fingers. “Soldier, look to your children.”

  Lowtower’s hands were visibly shaking when he began to give orders, giving one of his men provisional command and ordering him to support Tejohn’s efforts.

  The destruction of part of the shutter was loud enough to draw curious onlookers. Most wore the short, ragged tunics of servants, and it made Tejohn nauseous to see them so starved and miserable. The child who had lost her hands to the creature at his feet might have been one of their sons or daughters.

  Great Way, he could not bear to
think of his little Teberr or the twins at the mercy of a hollowed-out medical scholar. The very thought brought on a surge of blood-red rage. At least he’d had the chance to take up a spear in the depths of his own grief; what remedy could a servant seek?

  “Find a mining scholar and bring him here,” he said. The servants stared at him without moving.

  “Are you all deaf?” Lowtower roared. “The tyr called for a scholar! You two! Find one and bring him! Torches, too! The rest of you, find some duties to occupy yourselves or I will think of something for you!”

  That made them rush back into the interior corridor like leaves in a flooding stream. When Tejohn turned back toward the others, he found that both merchants had found the courage to approach the dead creature on the floor. They stared in horrified fascination.

  “I should make bold enough to suggest,” Redegg said quietly, “that Doctor Twofin knows we are out here.”

  If that was meant to be a joke, it did not make anyone laugh. “You must understand,” Bluepetal said, “we had no idea. He asked me to deliver living rats. I… Maybe we should have suspected, but we didn’t. Song knows--”

  “Never mind,” Tejohn said. “You know now. There’s no real reason for you to linger here in this hall. Doctor Twofin is not likely to be inside. Do you two know where the old tyr’s prison cells are?” Bluepetal nodded. “Go with the commander and help him find his family, then start the process of sorting out the prisoners who are political hostages and the ones who are there for murder, thieving, or rape.”

  “That should be simple enough,” Redegg muttered without looking up, “since the political hostages are the only ones still alive.”

  “We will send them home,” Lowtower promised.

  “What about this?” Redegg gestured toward the rat creature on the stone floor.

  Tejohn’s first instinct was to sweep it off the gallery into the lake below. His desire to be rid of it was powerful. “Few will believe what happened here if we do not preserve it. Tyr Twofin would not have held on to power without some allies; if we show this to them, it might forestall civil war. Go quickly.”

  As they hurried away, the two servants returned with torches and a crooked old woman who must have been the scholar. The square-bodied young man that Lowtower had left in charge passed the torches to two of the men, then gently led the old woman to the door.

  She might have been an able scholar in her younger years, but she muttered and struggled to break apart the massive blocks holding the door shut. More of her spells failed than succeeded, but--with Tejohn anxiously gripping the hilt of his sword--she eventually created enough rubble to let the men push the door open.

  Doctor Twofin was not there, of course. Tejohn had known he couldn’t be there from the moment that he bashed a hole in the wall and found it unblocked. Still, he’d hoped to find the man hanging from a noose or something. Anything to satisfy his urge to fight.

  He thanked the old scholar, which seemed to surprise her. She was led away.

  There was a small table at the far end of the room and a large bed covered with down cushions. The old scholar was living in comfort. Tejohn stripped a green cloth from the bed, went into the hall, and wrapped up the little horror Doctor Twofin had created. When he went back inside, the soldiers were standing in the middle of the room, staring about in horror.

  The rest of the space was a workroom. There was a table with leather straps on it--Tejohn laid the little bundle upon it--and a stack of wooden cages against the wall. Inside the cages were...things.

  The shutter Tejohn broke had fallen onto one of the cages, smashing it just enough for those rat creatures to escape. In the other cages he saw a house cat with the head and neck of a serpent, a dog with the mouth and throat of a human being, a boq with an alligaunt’s feet and tail, and other, more terrible things. What he did not find, to his great relief, was a cage with a nearly-whole altered human being inside.

  He could make no sense of it. The rats with hands... Perhaps the doctor imagined they could be trained as thieves? The whole thing seemed pointless. Tejohn was used to cruelty. Kings, tyrs, and masters of any kind were cruel to their underlings on a whim--vicious, sometimes--but usually, that cruelty was designed to serve some purpose.

  This? Nothing had been accomplished here but pain and horror. He could feel the stink of this room settling into his hair and beard, slowly collecting on his skin. The room would have been unbearable if part of the wall had not been opened to the mountainside.

  On one of the tables nearby, there were bloody bronze tools--slender tongs, hammers, and sharp knives. On the floor beside it was a woven grass basket full of rotting pieces of meat, fur, and feathers. Flies buzzed above it. Tejohn assumed the wizard would pitch his refuse into the lake waters below, but he didn’t seem to have bothered for several days. And the man slept just over there.

  “Wait in the hall,” Tejohn said, and the soldiers complied happily. Tejohn held out his hand and one of the men readily turned over his spear. Hmf. The fellow Lowtower had put in charge stayed. Good fellow.

  Together, they went from cage to cage, killing. By unspoken agreement, they were careful to do each with a single thrust so the end was as quick and merciful as it could be. When it was all over, and the strange cries of pain and terror were silent, Tejohn felt as though he’d been soiled down to his bones. He returned to the edge of the gallery opening and was about to kick the basket of rotting meat out into the open air when he suddenly noticed a pair of tiny, perfect human ears lying among the blood and feathers.

  Someone’s child. Someone’s precious child.

  He nearly wept then, remembering the pain of finding his own murdered child. Could it have happened again? His children were supposed to be safe on the other side of the Straim, but they were closer to Peradain than he was. Had they been bitten by a grunt? Torn apart and eaten? He imagined finally finishing his mission and discovering that nothing was left of his family but old bones.

  The urge to throw off the oath he had made to Lar Italga was so powerful, it made him tremble. The Italgas were dead or had been transformed by The Blessing. Why should he stay here in the mountains when he could steal back the flying cart--

  Tejohn turned suddenly and ran to the door. “I need two spears to stand guard over this room. No one is to enter without Lowtower’s permission, understand? The rest of you will come with me.”

  They ran back the way they’d come, up the stairs and down long, dark corridors by the light of a single flickering torch. The soldier Lowtower had put in charge--with luck, Tejohn would not linger long enough to learn his name--took the lead once Tejohn explained where they needed to go.

  The sun had disappeared behind the peaks by the time they burst through a heavy wooden door and sprinted up a flight of wooden steps. The crosscurrents of the winds out of the Sweeps almost blew out their torch.

  The troops stamped up the stairs and came out onto the broad flat roof of the holdfast. Tejohn’s abused knees felt as though they were on fire when he topped the stairs, but he didn’t slow down.

  There, in the wind and darkness, was the flying cart that Doctor Twofin had dumped him out of so many days ago. There were three men standing guard over it. Of the scholar there was no sign.

  “Stop where you are!” one of the guards shouted at them. “This part of the holdfast is off limits to everyone but the Twofin family.”

  The man Lowtower had put in charge kept his point high as he stepped forward. “Jarel, things are changing quickly. The things we’ve discovered--”

  “We have our orders,” Jarel said.

  The tallest guard said, “What have you discovered?”

  “Horrors out of a children’s story. It sounds unbelievable but it’s true. The tyr’s brother has been creating monsters for him, right here in our own holdfast, not one level below the barracks.”

  “We were warned,” Jarel answered, his spear point still low. “We were warned that people would start spreading stories to dis
credit the tyr, but I never thought it would have come from you.”

  “It’s not gossip,” the soldier answered. “It’s not a cradle tale. Terrible things have been happening right under our noses--”

  “We were warned--”

  “Who?” Tejohn broke in. “Who warned you?”

  He immediately realized he’d made a mistake. As though noticing him for the first time, Jarel bared his teeth and shouted, “Assassin!”

  The lead soldier sidestepped to move between Jarel and Tejohn. “We’ve known each other since we were old enough to piss in pots--”

  “And now you break your oaths to protect a murderer!”

  Jarel thrust his spear into his friend’s belly.

  Whether it was the soldier’s last-moment evasion or that Jarel didn’t have his heart in it, the iron tip caught the man in the side and did not go very deep.

  The tall guard cried, “What are you doing?” and yanked the weapon back. The other soldiers rushed forward and knocked Jarel to the deck. One of the men raised his spear.

  “Don’t kill him!” Tejohn shouted, his voice carrying above the general roar. The upraised spear never struck. He rushed to the fallen soldier and knelt beside him. “This doesn’t look too bad. What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Jarel, my tyr. Just like him. Please show him mercy. He’s a good soldier.”

  “Fair counsel,” Tejohn said. “Your people are going to need good soldiers very soon.” He looked up at the nearest three men. “Get him to a sleepstone. He isn’t bad but I don’t want him to wait.”

  “Yes, my tyr.” They began to gather him up.

  Tejohn looked at the guard lying on the platform. The man’s expression was hunted and his gritted teeth were bared. “And you, Jarel-the-guard, your friend just pleaded for your life. Can you--”

  Before Tejohn could finish, Jarel burst into tears. “What have I done?” the man said. “He’s closer to me than my own brother!”