Monument sustain him, the entire roof had already caught fire. Flames lit the room, running up the wooden planks like liquid color. Tejohn looked down at his bucket and saw that it was still only half full.
Cazia finished her spell and a heavy spray of water shot out from the space between her hands. It struck the roof with a sharp hiss. Steam began to immediately billow among the rafters.
Winstul had moved toward the princess, clutching one half of Tejohn’s cloak over his front and holding the other over the girl to protect her from cinders. Tejohn’s bucket was finally full, but when he splashed it against the rafters, it was like trying to dam a river with a single spade. Luckily, the girl’s water spell was as astonishingly strong as her bolt of fire.
“I have to keep at them from outside,” Cazia said. Her water spell and the flames had both failed at the same time. She cast another Gift, this one to crumble the top stone of their barricade. It collapsed, most of it tumbling off the stone below. She swept her arm through the heap to clear a space, then sprang onto it.
Winstul stared upward at the roof. There were gaps between the planks; firelight could be seen though them. “Should I move the girl?” he asked.
“Not if you want to live,” Cazia snapped. Then she dropped through to the other side.
Tejohn was only a step or two behind her. The stones scraped against his legs as he slid across the top of the barricade, and he landed beside her.
She was already starting another water spell. Tejohn looked back at the roof; the exterior was burning brightly in the darkness. He heard shrieks echo out of the wilderness, but they seemed to be retreating. The spears in his hands seemed like small comfort against the dangers of the night, but with luck, those dangers were not coming back.
Cazia began to spray water from her hands onto the roof itself. Billows of steam rose into the darkness and water ran down the slanted sides of the roof. Great Way, Tejohn had never imagined a scholar could possess such potent magic without being mad. It unnerved him and made him feel useless. Another way the world had changed.
Cazia’s spell died, or she let it die. The roof was still steaming and smoking in some places, but the visible flames were out. “Was that enough?”
“Wood can smolder and reignite. To be safe…”
She didn’t need any other encouragement. As she began her spell again, Tejohn stood behind her, peering into the darkness. Their flying cart was far enough away to be undamaged. The flames had not spread to any of the other buildings that he could see. The grunts were nowhere in sight.
And there was one of the Evening People, lying naked on the gravel.
Tejohn ignored him for the moment. They had few weapons and only two of the precious kinzchu stones left. One was mounted on the end of a spear--which he only just then noticed had been slightly charred by the fire. The other sat in the bottom of a pouch the princess had brought along, which he had left on the floor of the storeroom somewhere. If the blue grunts returned, he could use this spear against them. In fact, with a proper choke point, he could hold them for as long as he could stay awake.
If the purple grunts returned, he could use each of his two kinzchu stones once and only once. After that, he would have nothing but his mundane weapons. Spear, shield, and sword.
If Tejohn were to plan an assault on his own location, he would send in a handful of purple grunts, then the blue. They would expend the kinzchu stones and, after the battle, anyone who was cured of The Blessing could just be reinfected. Couldn’t they?
“There!” Cazia said, letting her spell end a third time. “If that isn’t enough, we’ll have to dump the whole building into a lake.”
Tejohn looked her over. Had he really said his own weapons were the only protection they had? He’d just seen her make a barricade, burn off an enemy’s arm, and douse a burning building. Yes, the roof was mostly ruined and it wouldn’t do much to keep out the rain, but—Fire and Fury, he wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He just knew that Cazia Freewell was a powerful resource, and he would need to adjust his strategies accordingly. The world has changed.
“What?” she asked.
Ah. He was staring at her. “You did well.”
“Well, how about that! You just complimented a scholar and lightning did not shoot out of a clear sky to strike you dead.”
“Maybe next time.” With the fire extinguished, he could not see the expression on the girl’s face, but she spoke as if she were smiling. He hoped she could tell that he was smiling, too.
He began to laugh, turning away in embarrassment. She joined in, adding a sharp belly laugh to his. Soon, they couldn’t stop, each one’s laughter feeding the other’s.
“Great Way, what are we doing?” she finally said, gasping out the words between breaths.
“A sudden scare,” Tejohn said, slowly taking control of his own response. “A decisive victory. It’s a good enough reason to be happy, isn’t it?”
She began to take deep, cleansing breaths. “It is. It really is.”
From the pitch-dark room, they heard Winstul’s voice. “What are you two doing?”
“How is the girl?” Tejohn asked.
“Drier than I am,” the man answered. “I don’t think she’s hurt, but it’s too dark to be sure.”
“One moment,” Cazia said. She fetched the lightstone from the end of the yard and passed it to the merchant.
He held it over the princess. “She’s fine,” he called. “Fine.”
“Good,” Tejohn said. “Winstul, climb out here. There’s work to be done.”
“Me?” He sounded surprised, but he came.
Tejohn turned to Cazia. “How are you?”
“Not hollowed out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is.”
“I’m not even close.”
Fire and Fury. “I’m glad to hear it. Go inside and look after the princess. Locate the pouch with her stone in it, but don’t touch. I—Are you bleeding?”
The side of her face was dark in the starlight. She touched it and put her finger in her mouth. “I am! Oh, that’s right. The mace burst. Remember? A piece of the stone grazed my cheek and ear.”
The implication of that struck Tejohn immediately. A kinzchu stone had touched her but had not stolen her magic. If it had, she would not have been able to put out the fire, nor could she have crumbled part of the barricade. The four of them would have been trapped inside a burning building. They might have found shelter in the pit, but the princess would never have survived.
“I know,” Cazia said, reading his silence. “Really, though, the stone should have stolen my magic when I picked up the wooden handle. It works through cloth and wood. So, even before it burst, it had lost its power.”
“My dear!” Winstul exclaimed. “That is a terrible, ragged cut! We should close it up quickly or it will scar. Think of your future husband.”
Cazia turned toward him. The light from inside the building was faint, but it was enough to see that her eyes were wide and she had a tiny, mad smile on her face. Her only response was a little laugh.
Tejohn set Winstul the task of entering the tower and searching for clothes and other supplies they might need, like bedding. He was also tasked to clean himself up somehow. The ash all over his body was as repulsive as an overturned chamberpot. The man gaped like a fish at every word, but he went to do it.
They stood over the prostrate body of the transformed grunt. “Well,” Cazia said, “this is an Evening Person, isn’t it? Isn’t that what they look like?”
“More or less. I mean, yes. Yes it is.”
She sighed. “This solves one mystery, at least.”
Co and the Evening People did not unleash The Blessing on us. They are victims, too. “It does. Help me with this refuse.” He took the shoulders of the Evening Person, she took his legs, and they carried him across the yard. They laid him atop the barricade, then Cazia climbed over and Tejohn slid the fellow across to her.
She gently lower
ed him to the floor and Tejohn climbed inside. Great Way, he was an odd thing.
By the light of the stone, they examined him. Tejohn had never before seen one naked, of course, but he was not particularly surprised to see that the space between his legs was smooth-fleshed and featureless. His abdomen was also smooth—no navel—and his ribs stuck forward in a narrow, rounded way like a pigeon’s. His shoulder and hip joints seemed oddly fluid, as though they connected in ways Tejohn could not quite understand. His face was slender, with high cheekbones, broad forehead, and a narrow chin beneath a lipless mouth; like most of his kind, he was blandly beautiful. His ears were pointed at the top and the bottom. Even his hair, with its thick, golden strands, was oddly stiff like the spines of feathers.
Twenty-three years ago, Tejohn had felt a powerful dislike for the Evening People and they way they treated him. Now, seeing one naked and helpless before him, he was overcome with disgust. They hadn’t looked like this. The Evening People had been radiant beings. They had not looked sickly and pathetic.
“Move him somewhere out of the way,” he said. “Then look after the princess. If there’s more trouble before we get back, seal yourselves in.”
“I will,” she said. She was even worse at lying than he was.
There was no use loitering. Tejohn ran to the cart and began bringing their supplies to the storeroom. Mostly, they had food, but there was a bit of bedding and some tools, too. By the time he’d moved everything, Winstul still had not returned.
Tejohn hurried into the low tower. The bottom floor was empty; for a moment, he was afraid that the floor would still be littered with the bodies of the men he’d killed here so long ago. But no, all that had been cleaned away.
He found Winstul on the roof, pouring oil into his hair. Beside him was a scraping stick. The man was naked and glistening. Tejohn glanced at his ash-covered cloak where it lay in a jumble by the wall. There it would remain until the world crumbled.
Winstul began scraping the oil from his skin and flinging it away from him. “I really need a bath for this to be effective.”
“Tell me how it was.”
“What was? Being blessed?” Tejohn didn’t like that term but he let it slide. “I… There’s not much to tell. We knew the grunts were coming, but I was sure that my house would be looted and burned if I left it. I have enemies, you understand. People who want to cut timber themselves…”
“Had enemies, you mean.”
“Er, yes. Quite. I knew that we would be reduced to penniless refugees if we fled westward. To the east, I had friends. In the west, none. So we… I mean, I hired a scholar to stay with us, and I forbade anyone in the family from fleeing. Most obeyed. Most were there, in my great room with me, when…” He paused again.
“The story won’t get any less painful if you hold it in.”
He set the scraper beside him. “The beasts had already beaten down the front door. It was oak, you know. And a tall stack of flat stones braced it, somewhat like what the girl did tonight. I wish I’d had her with us on that day. Anyway, none of it mattered. The creatures were relentless. Their bones must have been made of iron to withstand the blows they laid against my home. Their hands, their shoulders, all of them should have been shattered by the collisions.”
Tejohn figured they had been shattered, then healed again. But it wasn’t time to interrupt.
“We kept retreating from room to room in the house. I had bought the cursed thing to fend off thieves and brigands, but against grunts, I had no hope. Eventually, my guards were dead or fled and we were down to one room, the great room at the top of my tower.
“The grunts caught the scholar first as he tried to strengthen the barricade. Then my daughter-in-law, then my sister’s husband. They were each just torn apart and eaten. My daughter-in-law… Fire and Fury, I will never forget the look on her face.
“The rest of us were bitten. Six grandchildren, five children and their spouses, my wife and my two sisters. Then we just sat in that room, growing hungrier, waiting. My memory gets fuzzier about this part. I think I was the first to change. Or maybe the third. It’s hard to say. I remember feeling a powerful need to get away from the others., though. I couldn’t bear to be near them any longer and ran off into the wilderness.
“I caught a deer unawares and ate it raw. That I remember clearly.”
“You didn’t try to transform it?”
Winstul picked up the scraper again and began to use it. “No, I couldn’t. It was the wrong thing, if you know what I mean, like trying to ride a wheeled cart across a lake with… Hold on, I remember falling into a lake. I was on a ledge and some rocks slid loose. I plunged into deep water and immediately began drowning. I couldn’t hold my breath.”
“You couldn’t? Why not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think the grunts can hold their breath at all. I began to drown immediately, but I caught hold of a fallen tree and pulled myself back to the air. I remember that clearing the water from my lungs was Fire-taken painful.”
Tejohn hadn’t known that the grunts were unable to hold their breath. That would explain why they were so shy around water, though. That information would be useful, someday. “Can you remember anything else?”
“I remember hunting. It was… You aren’t going to like this part, but I’m just going to say it. Hunting was sacred. It was like being part of the universe, like praising all the gods around us, or doing magic. Not that I’ve ever been a scholar, but hunting as a grunt is as close as I can imagine getting to letting true power flow through me and out into the world. Do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t.”
Winstul nodded. “You’re an honest man. Who did you come here expecting to find?”
“A man named Wimnell Farrabell. I’d hoped he would be able to hold out.”
“I’m sorry you found me instead. I know you’re disappointed, but I will do my best to help in any way I can.”
Tejohn stood. “You can start by getting off the roof. There are still ruhgrit about.”
That required a bit of explanation, but the old merchant was glad to receive it. He picked up the jug of oil and the scraper and followed Tejohn into the tower.
While Winstul finished cleaning, Tejohn fetched blankets and cloaks for all of them. He returned to the storeroom, vaguely pleased to be with Cazia Freewell again. She was a fighter, like him, and it felt good to be around other fighters in dangerous times.
Everything has changed. He couldn’t help but think so. Scholars that could be cured when they went hollow, but remained incredibly powerful? If they saved their world, they would never be able to remake the one they’d lost. As if he would want that.
They covered the princess and the Evening Person, then laid out a few bedrolls opposite the broken pipe. Water still flowed from it, across the floor, and into the pit. Tejohn apologized to Cazia for breaking it, mainly because they would be unable to cover the pit and block that stench. She didn’t seem to mind. Then he sought and found the princess’s belt pouch. There was only one kinzchu stone inside.
It was some time later that Winstul returned from the tower, and Tejohn was startled by what he’d found. There was a woolen blanket and some light rope that he tied off on the walls around them, protecting the princess from rain. He had also found plates and bowls, a scholar’s robe for himself, and a bedrobe for the Evening Person. The bedrolls he brought were thicker and softer than the ones Tejohn had found.
The night was still young, but Cazia was so exhausted, she was ready to collapse. She had flown the cart all day, then faced down the grunts with Tejohn. Now that they were all in the storeroom, she added to the barricade so it blocked the entire door. Winstul made sure to prepare her bedding first, then brought her a clean cloth to tie over the cut on her face.
The girl fell asleep immediately, but Tejohn stayed up until Winstul was ready to sleep. They nodded to each other and lay down. Soon, Tejohn heard them all snoring.
Javien killed those children
at the farm, and I let him.
They could have been cured. That was the naked fact of it. If he’d stayed his hand that day, had just dragged Javien away from that farmhouse and kept to their mission, the people they’d murdered that day would still be out there somewhere, waiting for a cure.
But of course he hadn’t. He was a man with weapons and a talent for using them. Every problem was solved with sharpened steel, and when he made mistakes, there was no hope of putting them right.
The old farm couple. The bitten soldiers. The mother cradling her small children to herself. Maybe… Maybe they would have transformed and then come hunting Javien and himself. Maybe sparing their lives would have cut short the quest Lar had given him.
But maybe not. He couldn’t tell himself reassuring lies, not about this.
The fact of it was as unavoidable as it was unbearable, like a scar he could never heal and never hide. His shame and anger were there with him, too, like a shadow self that occupied the same space he did. This was something he was never going to escape. Never.
Tejohn shut his eyes and, despite his turmoil, felt exhaustion finally claim him.
The princess slept all through the day and the next night. In the morning, Tejohn briefly described the water-dripping device he’d seen in the temple in Ussmajil and Winstul immediately went to work recreating one. He used the bucket, a few pieces of cut basket and some long threads from the linen bedding to design something that would drip water—cleansed by Cazia’s magic—onto the princess’s lips while she slept. The Evening Person lay on a length of bedding in the corner. He had not regained consciousness, and Tejohn began to wonder if he ever would.
When Ivy woke, she was famished but not as parched as most people healed by the sleepstone would be. Tejohn made them all sit down to a meal.
The girl had a patch of blue fur growing on the back of her leg where her small second injury had been. Yes, she had been bitten. Mid-meal, Tejohn handed her the pouch, and she dropped the kinzchu stone into her hand. The blue hairs smoldered and burned to ash without any other effect; Winstul wiped it away with a piece of damp cloth. The little girl looked at each of them with a shocked expression, as though she’d just been slapped.
The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way Page 20
