Tejohn took hold of the priest’s sleeve. “It’s time we moved on. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“Where are you folks heading?” the heavy farmer said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Simblin lands,” Tejohn answered immediately. “We’re hoping to turn some rumors into actual news.” Javien looked startled by that answer, and the two farmers noticed. Tejohn bulled on anyway. “We’re hoping to go cross-country at some point ahead, roads being what they are. Do you think there’s a friendly farmer in these parts who might give us passage across his land?”
Both farmers snorted. The skinny one said, “If you see a piece of land without a fence on it, you give it a try.” There had been no breaks in the fences since they’d left the market.
Javien performed a brief prayer over them, for which they nodded their heads in thanks. The heavier farmer called, “May Fury bless you,” as they walked away.
“Why did you do that?” Javien snapped. They were not quite out of earshot, and Tejohn clenched his fist to urge him to silence. Unfortunately, the priest was not so easily cowed. He spoke again, his voice quieter but just as urgent. “Farmers will usually make donations to traveling beacons. If you’d given me more time, I might have gotten some eggs or flatbread out of them.”
“The Blessing says its name,” Tejohn whispered. “Didn’t you hear me explain it to Beacon Veliender? It’s not simple grunting noises that the grunts make; they’re calling out their name in their own language. When cursed humans begin to transform, they start to say it, too. ‘Bless this bless that I don’t bless what you’re blessing.’”
“Do you think he might be… Could the curse be so close?”
“We need to get off the road.” Tejohn started walking faster, then glanced over his shoulder. “Soon. And you need to stop giving away my lies. Cultivate some control over your expression.”
They kept going, striding down the empty road all through the middle of the day. Tejohn broke a heel of meatbread and they ate it on the move.
There were no people. A road like this so close to the city, even during the summer when there would be few crops to sell, should never be this desolate. Were there no vagabond musicians, no tinworkers, no young fellows crossing the valley to spy on some farmer’s daughters?
No refugees?
Tejohn heard the clack of crockery tapping together from up ahead. Javien started toward the nearest fence, but Tejohn grabbed hold of him and kept him close.
An okshim came plodding around the bend of the road. Its short fur was mostly gray with a few scattered patches of brown, and the curving horns above its eyes were thick and heavily ridged. It was an old beast, slow-moving and tired. The leather yoke around its neck was worn and split.
Behind it was a wooden cart loaded with everything a farm family might want to save from their home: folded cloths, a box of tools, a coil of rope, leather straps, cooking utensils, and more. They were common goods, but that was what they had.
A short, curly-haired woman sat at the front of the cart, holding the okshim’s reins. A pair of young children with pale eastern complexions sat on the back of the cart, and their father, a big, yellow-haired man who must have come all the way from Indrega, followed behind, singing quietly to them.
Tejohn hailed them, then moved almost into the ditch to let them pass. It was the okshim’s horny soles making the crockery noise against the stones of the road, and he’d seen the beasts lash out to the side with those big, flat feet. No okshim was ever so domesticated that you didn’t have to worry about a sudden kick.
The curly-haired woman was older than he’d first thought, just a few years younger than himself. The blond man was at least ten years her junior. “It’s a fine afternoon to be out, Beacon,” she said, ignoring Tejohn all together.
“Indeed it is. We’re so close to midsummer, I would have expected more heat.”
“Once the rains stop blowing through, we’ll have enough heat to frizz your hair worse than mine. Safe travels to you.”
With that, she turned her attention to the road. She wasn’t interested in any further conversation. “The roads seem unusually empty,” Tejohn said.
“Think so?” She glanced at him but did not slow the okshim’s slow steady pace.
Javien had stepped toward the woman when she spoke, but Tejohn pulled him back. “Are you heading to Ussmajil?”
“We are. And you should be, too.”
“It’s dangerous there.”
The young husband moved toward the back of the cart and laid his hand on a billhook.
“Points high,” Tejohn said, showing his empty hands. “There are king’s spears at the edge of the market who examine everyone who comes down the road. If you have any bite marks on you or patches of blue fur, you’re better off turning back.”
“If we had bites on us, there would be nowhere we could turn, but I thank you for the warning.”
“What’s happening here?” Tejohn insisted. The cart had come even with him and he walked backward to stay within the woman’s sight. “This priest and I have a long way to travel yet, but I can’t protect him if I don’t know--”
“Many of these farms are empty.” Her voice sounded flat. “Many of my neighbors have been carried away. If I were traveling westward through the Whiswal Vale, I would stay off the road, seek out no human company, cook nothing, and do no hunting. You never know what you’ll find in the heavy brush at the edge of a stream.”
“And the people?”
“The people are gone,” she said, then clicked her tongue to make the beast pick up its pace. Her pale-skinned, pale-eyed companion watched them suspiciously as he passed.
“The Little Spinner never slows,” Javien said. “Fire pass you by, and peaceful be your journey on The Way.”
The man from Indrega said, “Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.” There was an ironic note in his voice, as though he was pledging an oath he knew he would break.
Tejohn and Javien watched them go, then started westward on the road again. “I had hoped to avoid this,” Javien muttered. “I had hoped the danger would not have reached here already.”
“Misplaced hope has killed more people than spear and sword combined,” Tejohn said. “Let’s move quickly.”
They did not leave the road immediately. They followed it along the base of the valley as it wound around gullies and tumbles of rock. Finally, toward the middle of the day, Tejohn saw what he was looking for.
It was an orchard, planted on a slightly steeper part of the northern side of the road. Tejohn led Javien over the fence of the adjoining property--they were growing hops, and the smell of it kindled many happy childhood memories--then climbed the wooden rail fence that separated the farms. Tejohn showed the priest how to jump from the top of the rail to the other side of the netting at the base of the orchard, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy, then they moved quietly up the hill.
“Time for you to change out of your red robe,” Tejohn said.
“What if the farmer objects? A beacon’s colors can still smooth over--”
“I think this property is abandoned. Did you notice the rents in the netting at the base of the hill? We’re going to approach the farmhouse cautiously. If there’s firelight inside, you can change again.”
“It will be some time before the end of the day,” the priest answered.
True enough. They climbed the hill as quietly as they could. When they finally reached the crest, they came to a bare meadow with a modest house at the far side. It was larger than Tejohn expected, with mortared stone walls on the western side and a wooden tile roof. Someone had done quite well for themselves.
They crouched just out of view of the house and waited for darkness to come. Tejohn had to stop the priest from making a fire, which clearly annoyed him. Javien insisted that a campfire at night would keep wild animals away, and Tejohn spent a long time explaining that would not work on grunts.
They ate sparingly
from the packs, watching for signs of life inside the house. There were none. Finally, early in the evening, Tejohn ordered Javien to stay where he was and ran to look into the house.
All but one of the shutters were closed, and the back door had been broken off its hinges. Knife in hand, Tejohn crouched in the doorway, utterly unable to see into the pitch black of the room. There was no stink of blood or rotting corpses, for which he was grateful, but he would not be able to truly investigate the house until it was lit by daylight.
He withdrew and circled back to break the news that Javien would be spending the night on tree roots without a fire. Tejohn took first watch. It was well past midnight when they switched.
A gentle hand shook him awake. His eyes snapped open to see pre-dawn light shining through gentle drizzling storm clouds. Javien’s face was close to his. “Fire has come to take us both.”
Tejohn rolled over quietly and lifted his head high enough to see the house. Someone or something was crashing around inside, and it was only a few moments before a pair of shutters burst open and a grunt began to climb through.
It was one of the blue ones, Tejohn saw, what King Lar had called a “little brother.” The original grunts who had come through the portal in Peradain were huge creatures and had a faint purple coloring to their fur. This was a transformed human, turned into a monster with a bite.
It was covered with dark blue fur with red stripes running across its head and torso. The skull was shaped like a melding between a human and a bear, but the eyes were quite close together and the sloping forehead was covered with a thick bony plate.
Its thickly muscled arms ended in humanlike hands, but they were longer than they should have been. It tumbled onto the grass, and Tejohn could see that its legs ended in a second pair of hands. All four limbs sported long claws that were as curved as a hawk’s talons. There were sharp little spurs at its elbows and knees. On its back, protruding from swirls of red and blue fur, were bony protective ridges.
This was his first good look at a blue one while it was alive. While the big brothers had tremendous, irresistible power, this one had a deadly quickness about it.
Javien gasped slightly when he saw the grunt, but the light rain muffled the sound. The beast lifted its bearish head and displayed its long fangs. It appeared frustrated, as though it knew prey was close but could not locate it. The beast lifted its leg and urinated against the side of the house.
Tejohn laid his hand on his knife. As weapons went, it would not be enough to defeat a grunt but, with luck, the creature would lose its life taking his.
The pointed ears on the top of its head twitched, and it turned to the east, rising up on its hind legs to stare off into the distance. It huffed loudly and growled, then sprinted across the meadow toward the next farm. Fire and Fury, it was fast and graceful.
“Monument sustain me,” Javien said. “Was that the thing that tore down the Peradaini empire?”
“No,” Tejohn whispered. “That was its little brother. Follow me.”
The priest objected in a low, harsh voice, but he followed all the same. Tejohn led him along the edge of the meadow to the path the grunt had taken. It was a trail wide enough for an okshim, and the grunt had already sprinted down the long slope almost to the rail fence.
On the far side of the fence was a piece of pastureland. Sheep fled uphill, bleating in terror. Standing partway up the hill, maybe twenty paces from the rail, was a line of five soldiers.
Chapter 11
Cazia knew it would be more difficult to climb this side of the Northern Barrier, but she had underestimated it. The far side of the range was made of rock that had been melted into a uniform solid. This side was a mix of dirt and stone that crumbled and shifted as she dug. That first antechamber had been a little too wide and the roof began to shift. Ivy squealed in terror; Cazia created a narrow block of pink granite to shore it up.
“Mining,” Cazia said weakly. “Amateur mining.” None of them wanted to linger in that space.
They climbed higher, carefully clearing small ventilation holes with their hands so that the stones wouldn’t tumble down the side of the cliff and draw attention to them, then stopped for a short while, sleeping in a line in the narrow tunnel.
When they woke, they could see daylight through their narrow air shaft. It was barely past noon. They ate lightly and Cazia began to cast her spell, breaking the stone above them to the east, then pushing it behind her.
Had it been such slow going the first time? It must have, but it hadn’t seemed so.
At the end of that day, she created a narrow space for them all and announced it was time to rest. Kinz immediately pressed a Tilkilit stone against her leg. Cazia gasped as her magic was torn away from her, but she had gotten used to the effect and recovered quickly.
“That was dumb,” she said.
“Every two days,” Kinz said, as though she knew all along that Cazia would protest. “That was our agreement we made. Two days of spells: dart-shooting and stone-breaking. One day becoming the normal person again.”
“I know. But you could have at least waited for me to create enough water for my recovery day.”
Kinz seemed genuinely abashed at that. At least their lightstone was new enough to last a few days. Cazia covered it and they did their best to sleep on the stony floor.
When she woke, Cazia had no idea what time it was or how long she’d been sleeping.
Kinz murmured, then spoke. She was talking in her sleep, pleading someone precious to her that they should “leave the others.” She sounded terribly upset.
Cazia laid her hand on the older girl’s shoulder and said gently, “It’s just a dream. It’s just a--”
Kinz suddenly thrashed awake. “OFF,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Never make to touch me! Never!”
Cazia couldn’t believe the girl’s nerve. “You were talking in your sleep and I--”
But Kinz wasn’t interested in an explanation. She wanted to hold on to her outrage. “Never!”
“What is it with you two, anyway?” Ivy said, obviously annoyed. “If we are going to be trapped in these awful, filthy tunnels again, can we not be decent to each other?”
“Tell her that,” Cazia snapped.
“I am telling both of you! I hate the digging. I hate the cramped space. I hate the way my knees get all scraped up. Do you understand? This is hard enough without you two doing this thing. I wish you were Ergoll so I could order you to behave.”
“We will behave,” Kinz said. “I have made polite in less agreeable company.”
Cazia sighed. “I’m not very good at polite, little sister.”
Ivy grinned and hugged her. “But you will try for me, yes?”
The girl was adorable when she smiled. “Absolutely not,” Cazia said. Ivy laughed. Cazia loved to hear her laugh. “We’re going to be stuck here a while. Why don’t you tell us something about your people? Tell us about the way you grew up.”
They spent the day talking about themselves, sharing more of their personal histories than they ever had before. The princess started first, and everything she said surprised them. Her family didn’t have a palace and she didn’t live separate from her people. They had a series of high-peaked houses where they spent the year, migrating from one part of the peninsula to another. Only the villa atop Goldgrass Hill had a sort of wall around it. Ivy lived among her people, being scolded by baker’s wives when she misbehaved and generally running wild in the mornings. Her afternoons were spent with tutors, and her evenings were spent with her parents, working with them by the fire on their weaving or leatherwork.
“It’s stories all the time with us,” she said. “There never seems to be an end of the stories my father or uncles had to tell me. Usually it was absurd tales that made no sense. My uncle Nezzeriskos had only recently begun to tell me grownup stories. You know, histories and things.”
Cazia knew Ivy’s uncle had been living with her in Peradain when The Blessing overran the
city. “What was your uncle like?”
“Funny! He had a very sharp wit and knew just how to make me laugh. It was wordplay with him all the time. He could be melancholy, too. Once, when I found him sitting alone by the fire late at night, I asked him why he was sad. He promised to tell me someday when he was older. Now I’ll never know.”
Kinz took Ivy’s hand and squeezed it.
Cazia took a deep, calming breath to prevent her from saying her next thoughts aloud. Any of them might die without their stories being heard. All the things she had seen in the Qorr Valley would be lost if the tunnel collapsed or the Great Terror swooped down on them from above.
After she had gone hollow, she had wanted to return to human civilization for…what? The memory was a bit fuzzy. She remembered having the feeling, and that the feeling had been strong, but she had been a different person. She’d wanted to return to the world and be famous for what she had seen and done. She wanted to tell her story.
To say that was an unexpected side effect of going hollow would be to understate things quite a bit. Cazia herself had never sought fame for its own sake; everyone in the Palace already knew who she was (and most hated her). Fame had always seemed more burden than anything else. Her hollowed self had also been powerfully curious.
She looked around at the tunnel and the situation she was in; obviously, curiosity was her own trait as well. But why—
Kinz broke her reverie by talking about her life following an okshim herd. She described the long treks, the travel through the Sweeps, the time and effort they spent fending off attacks by mountain lions and lakeboys. She described the Shelterlands where they spent their winters, so close to the ocean, but which was, she insisted, perfectly safe.
Her people too, told stories, but they told the same stories to young and old. Fantastical tales, tales of virtue rewarded, tales of heartbreak and lost love.
The last kind had been her favorite. She admitted, with a little flush of her sun-darkened cheeks, that she had sometimes imagined herself in the center of one of those stories.
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 12
