The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way

by Harry Connolly

  Cazia began the Ninth Gift, glad she’d had a chance to practice it in Qorr during their escape. She felt the power reach out and wash over the city, smothering the fire with only her will.

  She turned her attention back to the courtyard. The humans, kinzchu stones cradled in their arms, ventured farther from the tower to throw them at nearby grunts. For their part, The Blessing came only to the edge of the courtyard, their ears flat and their rear ends low to the ground. They paused only long enough to glance at the advancing humans and retreat in terror.

  “We’re winning!” Cazia cried.

  One of the men nearby burst open like a bag of blood.

  A massive stone had struck him in the belly, tearing straight through him with a shocking red splash. Cazia was so startled by the sight that she just stood there, staring at his torn, twisted body. How strange a person looked when they were broken so completely; he no longer looked like a human being.

  The others had stopped and stared as well. Then a second stone flew in, shattering against the granite wall of the tower. A third caught a woman on the top of her head, shearing it off.

  The grunts had gathered at the farthest part of the courtyard they could, all the way out by the bridge and the river. The blue ones ran back and forth from the riverbank--it was too far to see clearly, but Cazia realized they must have been carrying stones of their own--while the larger ones threw.

  To their credit, the people redoubled their efforts, screaming in defiance as they hurled rocks with all the strength the could muster, but the grunts hung back at the very edge of the courtyard, well out of range. Those who ran forward to move within range were targeted by the beasts and cut down.

  “Issilas!” Cazia called. The girl rushed to her. Her face was streaked with sweat and her eyes wide with terror. Cazia held up five fingers, then turned her palm to the sky. The girl understood immediately. While Cazia began a spell, the servant gathered five kinzchu stones and held them in her upturned hands.

  The Tenth Gift—the dart spell—didn’t actually require the scholar to hold the dart they were shooting. They usually did, out of convenience, but it wasn’t necessary. Another stone shattered against the tower, raining dust onto Cazia’s neck. Then one hit the first pile of kinzchu stones, spraying them across the courtyard. A third tore through a young man’s hip, leaving him screaming in the muddy yard.

  Cazia and Issilas stood unmoving, far from cover, while Cazia went through the hand motions to cast her spell. We are exposed. The two of them would die as soon as one of the grunts chose them as a target. If they chose someone else, the girls would live. Only luck would determine if she died here. Concentrate. Only luck.

  Issilas’s hands didn’t even tremble. When the spell went off, the five stones shot out of the girl’s palm. Each struck one of the blue grunts perfectly, and they collapsed. The purple grunts beside them stumbled backward in fear and surprise

  “Shihrah!” was the cry, and two dozen filthy, naked people charged barefoot across the open field, stones in hand. Song knew their bravery was astonishing. Just astonishing.

  Issilas had already picked up five more stones and Cazia began her spell once more, but she was barely halfway through when a sudden deafening roar from much too close behind her broke her concentration.

  Without thinking, she ducked low and grabbed her mace. Something passed just above her, hitting the servant girl with a vicious wet smack.

  Issilas! Cazia didn’t stand. She spun and saw that a massive purple grunt had gotten behind them somehow--Great Way, the thing was huge--and it was not alone. She jabbed her broken weapon against its foot.

  The kinzchu stone in her mace was more powerful than the ones she made from scholar stone, and the beast collapsed immediately. The mace in her hand began to vibrate, the metal shaking so hard, it stung.

  The second grunt lunged at the merchant couple, arms outstretched. “Blessing!” Cazia shouted, stealing Tejohn’s trick. The beast halted and turned toward her, its eyes wild with animal rage. Fire and Fury, how could Old Stoneface have given her the idea that this was something she should do?

  She dove flat to the ground as the grunt lunged at her. Its raking claw caught on the back of her jacket and tore it, then it staggered, one of its feet pressing down on her left arm. Great Way, it was heavy.

  Rolling onto her left side, Cazia lifted her vibrating mace and pressed it against the beast’s crotch. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to wait—

  The kinzchu stone burst. The mace jumped out of her hand and struck her on the temple, making stars appear in her eyes. The grunt screamed and fell back, its fur matted with repulsive gray blood. Cazia rolled away from it—directly onto a kinzchu stone.

  Her magic flooded out of her.

  Great Way, please do not let your magic leave me. Not now. Great Way, there is still fighting to be done.

  Her prayer went unanswered.

  The merchant couple pelted the wounded grunt with stones, then grabbed Cazia’s arms. “Flee!” They shouted. “Flee!”

  And they were right. Cazia struggled to go with them, but in truth, they were dragging her through the mud. When the first grunt burst into flames, they were halfway to the sentry tower.

  Hot air knocked her flat. Fire and Fury, was she really going to be Fire-taken by actual fire? Her clothes aflame, Cazia rolled in the muddy earth to extinguish them. Then she remembered the second grunt and buried her face in the dirt as another wave of fire passed over her.

  The merchant couple, choking and filthy—just like her—slapped at her as she tried to rise. “Issilas!” she shouted, wondering where the little girl could be. The too-bright daylight made her dizzy and she’d forgotten what she was doing. Why were these people hitting her? She suddenly realized she was on fire. “Issilas!”

  There she was. Cazia ran to her and knelt beside her. The girl was still breathing. Cazia touched her face, smearing mud on one cheek, and her eyes fluttered open.

  “Owss.” She drew out that long sibilant noise, and the merchants knelt beside them both. They spoke briefly in Surgish. Issilas managed to move all her limbs, although she didn’t look as if she enjoyed it.

  “I think she will be well,” the husband said. “She is young and limber. Her skins will be many colors tomorrow, but I think she will be well.”

  Cazia breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. The girl had been so brave, especially there at the end. It would have been awful if she had been Fire-taken, too.

  The wife retrieved Cazia’s mace for her, offering it with a wry grin. When the kinzchu stone had burst, it had shattered the wooden handle beneath the metal exterior, and much of the metal shell had bent backwards.

  Cazia accepted it gratefully. It could be repaired.

  They could hear the fighting still going on in the town, but it had moved elsewhere. Good. Cazia’s mace was ruined, her magic gone, and her throwing arm had never been very good.

  She thanked the woman, then started to explain to the husband that she had fallen on a kinzchu stone and wouldn’t be able to do more magic for a while. Before she could finish, a tall armored man with a helm like a grass lion head marched out of the sentry tower. In his wake came several of the sentries, the soldiers who had charged in with kinzchu stones, and three naked old men with whip marks on their backs.

  Had this fool whipped people for being grunts?

  He hissed out a few sharp questions, his lip curled in disgust. One of the soldiers waved an arm in Cazia’s direction, and the entire group trailed the man as he marched toward her.

  “Are you the Peradaini scholars?” he said in his heavy accent.

  “I am,” Cazia answered. Great Way, she was tired. “My name is Ca—”

  “Your names doesn’t matter,” he said contemptuously. “You’re a filthy Italga dogs, and you will do as you’re told. I am General Shilmerette Osk. If that names is too complicated for a mangy attic cats like you, you may call me ‘eshelm,’ which means ‘general’ in the true languages of this lan
d. Now get to work making more of these magic stones of yours.”

  “I can’t,” Cazia said. “My magic—”

  “You will do as you’re told or you will be whipped!”

  Her eyes narrowed. This was too much. “Your arm must be pretty long if you can lash me from the safety of your tow--

  She never finished her sentence. Osk struck her across the face, hard, and Cazia fell to the mud, dazed once again.

  She hardly had a chance to catch her breath when Osk’s face landed beside hers, his mouth gaping and his eyes rolled back in his head. She scrambled back. There was a dagger hilt sticking out of his armpit.

  Numerous hands reached down to help her up, and there where many voices murmuring to her in Surgish, but one or two asking in Peradaini if she was badly hurt.

  “I’m fine,” she said absently to the merchant couple. She was bleeding again, but it wasn’t serious. “I’m fine.” Why were they being so kind to her? She had been clumsy enough to touch a kinzchu stone, and now she was useless to them when they still needed her most. “Please tell the others that I am extremely sorry, but I fell on one of the kinzchu stones and won’t be able to do magic for a while. We’ll have to make do with what we have.”

  The husband began translating. Cazia continued. “But I brought more weapons when I arrived last night. I saw them in the bottom of Tyr Freewell’s boat. The enchantment on those stones is stronger than the one on these”—she gestured to the stones on the ground around her—“so they should work faster, especially against the big grunts. These small ones should be good on arrowheads, if you have a fletcher. I didn’t.”

  The merchant translated that, then translated the response of a middle-aged man with a green comb on his helmet. “The Watch Commanders says that will be no problems, but for now, he’ll round up some boys who are handy with slings. Very accurate.”

  “Oh,” Cazia said. “That’s very smart.” Why were they all looking at her? “The stones will also cure a scholar who’s gone hollow, and…” What should she say next? “The grunts are afraid of water—which I think you already know—but they will also respond to someone shouting their name.”

  “Grunts?” the husband asked, surprised.

  “Blessing,” Cazia answered. “That’s what they call the curse that transforms them. You can get their attention and draw them to your position by shouting Blessing.”

  There was a murmur of interest when she told them that. Then she explained about the tall, slender, sexless golden people who were lying in the yard. She relayed what Dhe had told her about the kinzchu stones and expressed how important it was that they keep the Evening People alive. Assuming they hadn’t fallen on kinzchu stones already.

  With that, she was out of things to say. She felt utterly exhausted even though it was not midday yet.

  The Watch Commander spoke to the merchant, who translated. “Young woman, I’m sorry if this seems rude, but the others have asked me to find out your name.”

  Cazia couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Great Way, don’t your servants gossip? I thought it would have spread throughout the town by now. My name is Cazia Freewell.”

  The husband’s mouth dropped open, and so did two of the others, but not the Watch Commander’s. It was good to see who could understand her. “The tyr’s daughter?”

  “Yes! I came here so the Freewells could join the war against the grunts. We’re going to sweep them out of Kal-Maddum.”

  The Watch Commander began barking orders, scattering men and women in every direction. Cazia was led toward the holdfast, and the merchant couple accompanied her. “We’ll find some servants to help you clean up,” he said. “We’ll get you some robes to wear, too.”

  Give up her hiking skirts? “Save the robes for the people we’re curing. After being transformed by The Blessing, having something to wear will give them a little dignity. You’re going to need a lot of robes, I hope.”

  Issilas was sitting crookedly on the ground by the entrance to the holdfast, her face a grimace of pain. Cazia broke away from the merchants and helped her to her feet. The others stared at her in shock as she led the girl into the building.

  Water and washcloths were brought to them, and Cazia made a point of personally cleaning the mud from Issilas’s face, neck, and hands. Then she led the girl to a bed and urged her lie down and rest.

  When she returned to the others, the merchants orchestrated a small team of servants to care for Cazia in the same way, although she was muddier and bloodier than Issilas had been. The bandage on her forehead was replaced. She nearly asked for it as a keepsake; it was the only thing her grandmother had ever made for her. The scratches on her face were washed with rainwater and strong wine, then sewn shut. There was a great deal of tut-tutting, probably over the scars she’d have, but she didn’t care. Pagesh would have understood.

  Still, there was a lot to arrange. The Freewell holdfast needed sleepstones. More than one. If they couldn’t get them for some reason, she would have to move the townsfolk to a new holdfast. What’s more, Kal-Maddum was full of cropland that had been sown in the spring but had no one to reap them. If the Freewells were not already well provisioned for the winter, those lands would have to be harvested.

  “The chairs could be yours,” the merchant husband said out of nowhere, his voice low.

  “Chairs?” Cazia asked. Her own thoughts had been so far from any talk about sitting that she had no idea what he meant.

  “The Freewell chair,” he said. “Cwainzik Freewell has been losing support for many years, and his closest friend is right now lying out in the yard with a dagger in his heart. He would have been assassinated three years ago, I think, if there had been a clear successor that the watch, merchants, rivermen, and lumbermen could agree on.”

  Cazia lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “Are you suggesting I have my father assassinated?” Just that morning, she’d been thinking about it, but now that she’d seen battle… “I don’t want that.”

  “No, but we can not continue with him. Did you know he tried to sell the spears you brought? To his own soldiers? One of his watch commanders was asking more golds and silvers than I make in a years for just one. Did you know that, even with the spears, he planned to put on another games tonight for the pleasures of the crowds?”

  “He wanted to fight grunts instead of cure them?” Cazia asked, genuinely shocked. “For a cheering crowd?”

  The man stitching her forehead began to whine and cajole in Surgish. Fire and Fury, she really needed to make a translation stone. She gently brushed the man away; she wasn’t going to be silent for this conversation.

  “They were not just any grunts,” the husband said. “These were his own soldiers, bitten in the fights. They transformed in cages, waiting for their turn on the fields.”

  “Fire take him,” Cazia said. “Right. It’s clear he can’t stay on in the chair. But you can’t ask me to sit there. Women can’t become tyrs.”

  “The Surgish,” the husband said gently, “are what Peradainis call Twelfth Festival. We are new to imperial traditions, and many have not forgotten the old ways. Our people had many women leaders in the past. You could be chieftains. You could be queens.”

  Her own words to Tyr Treygar came back to her: You know that I’m only fifteen years old, right? Where they really so desperate for a new ruler that they would turn to her?

  Of course, the Freewell people weren’t turning to her. It was just this one man. He wanted to shove her into a confrontation with her own father here in the center of his power. Nice. Even if she succeeded, a tyr’s chair almost certainly came with a political marriage, something she had always wanted to avoid.

  Besides, even if he was right and the people truly wanted her--her, specifically--why would she want the chair? Mahz certainly hadn’t seemed to enjoy being chieftain.

  “I can’t even speak the language,” she said dismissively, then gestured to the surprisingly patient man with the needle to finish his stitching. It was a
long process and not at all pleasant. When he stitched the last scratch on her chin and lip, the process was more painful than the original attack. Still, it was not as bad as an arrow through the palm.

  Cazia was given fish broth, bread, and more of the apple mush. It was difficult to eat with stitches on one side of her mouth and a wet compress on the black eye Osk had given her, but she managed it.

  She seriously considered sneaking off to the little room where she’d laid Issilas down and trying to get some sleep of her own. Cleaning and stitching up after the battle had taken longer than the actual fight; would anyone begrudge the non-usurping daughter of the tyr a nap?

  The merchant came to visit her before she could slip away. “Some of the soldiers are insisting that the cured grunts be given servant robes. They want them to be a servant class.”

  “That’s…” Ridiculous, she nearly said. But it wasn’t her place to make those decisions. She had delivered the weapons and helped the Freewells drive out The Blessing. That would be enough.

  “Another things…” the merchant fidgeted for a moment, clearly looking uncomfortable. “You see, the tyr your fathers…”

  “Has he been killed?” Cazia couldn’t deny that she had a lump in her throat.

  “No, no, no. Not that. His archers have abandoned him, and he has threatened to destroy the spears you brought if we do not bring Eshelm Osk before him. We were hoping you could speak with him.”

  Naps were overrated, anyway. She stood. “How is the town?”

  “Cleansed. The grunts flee when they see we can destroy their curse.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t come back right away.”

  The Watch Commander returned to escort her to the riverbank, but first, he insisted she be given a cuirass. Cazia was too tired to argue or wear full iron. They compromised on a thick leather one that squashed her breasts uncomfortably. On her way toward the door, she picked up her ruined mace. Surely there was someone in the town who could repair it for her.