The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way

by Harry Connolly

  Right now.

  Nothing happened. Tejohn let out a sigh of relief and stepped up into the building, the priest close behind. It stank of death. They stood together in the dark room, letting their eyes slowly adjust, while unseen rats scurried at the edges of the room.

  “Monument sustain me,” Javien said. “Rats.”

  Tejohn almost laughed. “That sound reminds me of my childhood. My father waged an unending war on the rats in his fields. Take it as a good sign, beacon. If the grunts had a habit of coming here, the vermin would have fled long ago.”

  “So, what are you planning? Do we hide here until the rain passes? Until nightfall?”

  Tejohn didn’t answer. He moved carefully from bay to bay, doing his best to step quietly on the planks and avoid touching anything. As he passed around a tall rack of shelves, he saw the faint glimmers of light from the broad front door. It stood partly ajar, the crossbar lying broken in the gray light of the gap.

  This end of the barn was better lit, and Tejohn’s eyes adjusted quickly. A rope on a pulley hung over the bay from a connecting tie, and a pallet still dangled from a hook way up on the collar beam. Grain sacks had been stacked against one wall, and an empty oil lamp hung above the door.

  At his feet lay the dead body of a farm hound. It had been torn apart and devoured.

  “Oh!” Javien exclaimed. He crouched beside the corpse. “Poor thing. Poor old thing.”

  Tejohn found a box of bronze nails beside a hanging rack of bronze hatchets, hammers, tree saws, and a scythe. “Can you fire darts?”

  “Yes,” Javien answered.

  “Good.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  “If you were a soldier, I’d give you three lashes for asking questions. Since you’re not, I may not be so gentle. Come with me.”

  Tejohn led him to the broken front door. Together, they crouched low and peered through the gap.

  The open ground ahead sloped away from them, giving them a view of the small hillock atop the next farm. The barn looked similar to the one they were in, but the farmhouse itself, which they couldn’t see from the road, was the largest they’d seen yet. “Someone had a big family,” Tejohn muttered. Just the thought of it made him nauseous.

  A blue-furred grunt came around the side of the house and stalked through the front yard, walking on all fours like a long-armed bear. It looked in every direction, as tense as a sentry in enemy territory, which it was. It settled onto its haunches and sat still in the rain. Tejohn wished he could be closer to see if it was sniffing the air, listening, or looking--or some combination of those. Unfortunately, as amazing as his new eyes were, there were limits.

  Tejohn chuckled to himself. He’d been cured of nearsightedness so severe it had practically been blindness, and he was already wishing for more.

  “That’s the same one, isn’t it?” Javien said.

  “Doubtful. It’s standing guard over something inside the house. I don’t think it would have gone scouting for more...converts without leaving someone in place. I think there must be at least one more. At least.”

  “We should tell someone. We should hurry to the next guard post and tell the King’s spears what we’ve found. They could return in force--”

  “We just saw one grunt defeat five soldiers without taking a scratch. How many soldiers do you think they’d need to face two grunts, or three or five? How long do you think it would take to gather the force they’d need? Don’t forget that those five soldiers will be grunts themselves in three days.”

  “And who knows how many more people are inside that--”

  The grunt in the front yard barked once, sharply. Tejohn and Javien saw a second beast step out of the doorway--he hadn’t noticed that the farmhouse door had been torn off and thrown into the garden. Did the grunts hate doors? The creatures moved warily toward each other, and if they grunted or growled, it was impossible to hear over the patter of the rain.

  While they gestured sharply and snapped their jaws, a little girl appeared in the dark doorway. She couldn’t have been as old as two, and she wavered like a drunkard as she stumbled into the mud of the yard.

  Both creatures turned and roared at her, waving their arms above their heads. The child, startled, fell onto her rear end, and an older child of six or seven scooped her up and carried her back inside.

  A deadly, icy calm passed over Tejohn. He was not going to leave children at the mercy of The Blessing’s next hunger pang. He could not turn away. Not now.

  Chapter 17

  “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until dark?” Javien insisted for the tenth time.

  “Do it,” Tejohn said. “Now.”

  Javien began the hand motions to cast the spell. Tejohn immediately remembered Doctor Rexler making the same motions, his fist full of darts; someday, someone would have to make a chart of each spell so that soldiers could recognize them while they were being cast.

  Except that Javien didn’t cast the spell. He made an error somewhere and nothing came of it. “Fire and Fury,” he muttered. “Let me try that again.”

  “Mistakes like that could get both of us killed,” Tejohn said quietly.

  “I know. I know.” He started again. This time, his hands trembled slightly.

  Tejohn briefly considered withdrawing. He knew he shouldn’t even be risking this battle when his mission was so vital, but he felt he had no choice. Only a month or two ago, he would have walked away from the children he’d seen in that house, and the captured soldiers, too. He would have followed orders.

  There was no one to give him orders now. The Italgas were gone. Others called themselves kings now, but Tejohn felt nothing for them but sharp contempt. He’d even cast aside his own title, tyr, as a relic of the fallen empire.

  He had lived in the Palace of Song and Morning as an honored friend to the royal family, and he had lived in the bare, drafty barracks of a servant. That swing from one extreme to the other had freed him from the small voice in his head that said, This is a mistake, over and over. He knew it was a mistake just as he knew he had to do it.

  The priest managed to cast the spell correctly on the second try. “Whew,” he whispered after the rock flew from his hand. “I haven’t had much practice with that one.”

  His hands were still trembling slightly. “Will you be able to cast the other spells without fail?”

  “I think--”

  His answer was interrupted by the sharp crack of the stone striking the roof of the farmhouse below. Tejohn had originally planned to use the bronze nails, but the rocks would be harder to see in the air and on the ground.

  From the moment the noise sounded, the grunts went a little crazy. The beast inside the house charged out and leaped onto the roof, ready to challenge whatever he found there. The other grunt raced from a position near the fence line to the field behind the house, where the stone had skipped. The owners of the property had planted barley back there, and from the lack of furrows, it seemed the creatures had not explored it much.

  The grunt on the roof peered out over the barley while the other barreled through it.

  “Now,” Tejohn said.

  He and Javien rushed out of the barn into the tall grass. The grunts had broken a trail through the wheat on this property, too, and the two men ran across the exposed side of the hill until they came to it. Tejohn shoved the priest into the furrow, then pressed his head toward the ground. They needed to stay very low if they were going to make it to the bottom of the hill unseen.

  As expected, the grunts were riled, but as they roamed the back fields searching for the source of the disturbance, Tejohn and Javien ran to the edge of the crop at the bottom of the hill. The fence was only twenty feet away, but the men crouched quietly, waiting.

  The rain had worsened somewhat by the time the grunt passed. It was exploring the entire property now, and from his hiding place among the stalks, Tejohn watched it pass along the fence. He waited, counting his breaths the way he’d been taught as a gre
en recruit. At two thousand, they broke from cover, hopped the fence, and slipped into a ragged, curving furrow on the other hill. Enemy territory.

  From their high vantage point on the neighboring farm, Tejohn had studied the crooked paths the grunts had plowed through the field. The rain, falling even harder now, masked the sound of their footsteps as they crunched across the broken stalks. They came to the first turning, then the next, then continued straight across the field until the furrow curved back on itself, heading uphill toward the farmhouse and barn. This was the one he needed to take.

  He approached as near as he dared. The end of the ragged furrow met the muddy yard at an oblique angle, about twenty paces from the farmhouse itself. An axe, a woodpile, a flatbed cart, and a stone well stood between them.

  The barn was closer to the wheat, but not much closer to the end of the furrow. Tejohn was a little dismayed by the distance he had to cross, but this position would do. It would have to. The doors stood wide open at this end, too, just like the smaller entrance he’d seen from the far hill. The gray daylight showed scattered straw on the floor and a few toppled wooden shelves. Good.

  He lay about six paces from the end of the furrow, where he hoped the stalks were thick enough to hide him from the grunt patrolling the yard. He was about to decide they were not and move backward when a grunt passed.

  Its back was to him, of course, which meant it had already looked at his hiding place and missed him. Tejohn saw the ridges and plates on its back and his breath caught. He hadn’t been prepared. If it had rushed him while his shield was beneath him—placed there so the rain wouldn’t drum on it--and his spear on the ground, it could have torn him apart and devoured him, or worse.

  By the time the grunt went around the corner of the building, Tejohn realized he had forgotten to time it. He lay absolutely still until the beast passed again. The second time, it took the grunt one hundred forty-two breaths to circle the farmhouse. The third, it was one hundred and fifty-one.

  After the third, Tejohn crept forward until the farmhouse door came into view. It stood wide open, just like the others, and a grunt passed in front of it.

  “Now,” he whispered to Javien.

  The beacon came up out of the mud and sprinted out of the furrow toward the farm. He was exposed there for no more than three breaths, but those moments made Tejohn’s skin prickle with sweat. If one of the grunts spotted him...

  They didn’t. Javien reached the side of the farmhouse and ducked behind it out of sight of the house. Tejohn moved back to his safe spot and waited for the signal.

  After what seemed like much too long, Javien came back into view and the near corner of the barn. He was ready. Tejohn watched the grunt disappear around the corner of the house again as it made its endless, tedious circuits, then took a pair of pebbles from the inner pocket of his robe.

  Sliding up onto his knees, he counted to sixty-five, then threw them with all of his might. He’d been nearly blind his entire life, and chucking stones was not something he had a lot of practice with. Still, it was an open barn door, and Song knew he would get what he deserved if he missed.

  He didn’t. One of the pebbles struck a wooden shelf and skipped upward to rebound off a wall. The other hit the wall directly and bounced several times in the bay against wood and iron. A clay pot shattered.

  Javien had already begun the hand motions for his spell when the grunts’ roars began. Tejohn threw another stone, then dropped flat to the dirt. He could hear the grunts splashing toward the barn as his third stone struck something metal.

  Both grunts charged inside with the speed of an arrow in flight. Tejohn scrambled to his knees, then his feet, feeling as plodding as an invalid. A terrible furious pounding echoed from within the building as the creatures threw themselves against the small back door. Tejohn sprinted across the yard, his shield and spear in hand.

  This was the most dangerous part of the plan. Javien’s orders were to stay out of sight until the beasts were well trapped. If they escaped, he was to slip away while they tore Tejohn to pieces.

  They had to be quick. Tejohn sprinted, leaning so far forward, he nearly stumbled. He’d hoped the rain would hide the sound of his charge, but the two beasts pounded on the back door as if they were trying to tear the whole building down. They were making so much noise, he could have driven a herd of okshim at them and caught them by surprise.

  Tejohn crossed the open doorway to the other side of the barn. The interior was so dark, he couldn’t see anything inside, and his skin tingled at the idea that one of the grunts might leap upon him while his shield was out of position.

  It didn’t happen. They were clearly still furiously intent on battering the back door open. Tejohn laid his shield and shoulder against the door and--feeling it tremble as the grunts pounded the other end of the building--began to swing it closed. The hinge creaked. His boots squelched in the mud. His stomach fluttered in stark terror. The grunts did not notice until he had blocked off almost all of their light.

  Just as he wondered where the priest had gone--and if he’d fled in terror--the young man was there, hands in motion. Tejohn jammed his spear point into the mud at the base of the door as the first of the grunts threw itself against it. The whole door buckled and the spear point bent so far that the shaft bulged outward and touched Tejohn’s collarbone.

  He threw himself against the bottom of the door, adding his weight to the spear. A moment later, a broad pink block of stone appeared beside him, dropping into the mud so close by that the edge of his gray robe was trapped beneath it.

  The grunts’ assault on the door was deafening. Their claws slipped through the gaps in the wood and the stink of their breath blew across his face. Fire and Fury, they were close.

  The stone was big, but Tejohn wanted bigger. It was two hand-widths high, three times wider than that and maybe ten times longer: enough to block the door, but there was so much wobble, he thought the wood would split. “Another.”

  Javien shut his eyes and began the spell again. His hands were visibly trembling, and while he managed to cast it, the second stone was even smaller than the first. It fell atop the first one, the same dimensions of length and width but not nearly as tall.

  Tejohn tore his robe standing out of the mud, then stepped back. The assault against the door didn’t let up, but the door wobbled slightly less. Slightly. It wouldn’t hold for long.

  Javien’s eyes were wide and terrified. His courage was close to breaking, and if Tejohn asked for another stone block from him, he might not get anything else. “Now.”

  He started a different spell this time, and his hands trembled so terribly that he had to stop in the middle and start again. Tejohn stepped toward him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Whether that reassured him or not, the second attempt succeeded, and a gout of flame appeared from between his hands.

  The priest bent low and held the fire against the corner of the barn where the wood met the stone foundation. It caught immediately, and he began to walk along the side of the building, playing the flame on the wood and the narrow gaps between the slats. They’d agreed to light this side first, since the direction of the wind should have left it driest, but nothing about it looked dry to Tejohn. The rain that had masked their approach worked against them now.

  Still, the magic fire was hot; it steamed away the water and sent tongues of flame up the side of the wall. The grunts continued to pound on the door in the same frantic way, but their roars had a note of fear in them now.

  Tejohn rolled the hay cart to the door and upended it to brace the top part of the door. Then he fetched an armload of kindling from the woodpile for the back door. It had already been blocked by another piece of granite--that had been the priest’s first task, the one he’d had to complete before signaling. He piled them against the wood, wondering what good it would do when Javien brought his flame to this part of the building.

  Oil. He needed oil, but there was so little in the property next door that he hadn’t
bothered to bring it. The wheat stalks were wet enough that they might smother the fire instead of feed it, and--

  A sudden flare from inside the barn made Javien stumble backward and fall into the mud. The flames roared from inside the building, veils of firelight shining through the gaps in the wood onto the misting rain.

  The grunts became hysterical with fear, and the pounding against the wood stopped. Tejohn saw flame growing on the wall opposite the one the priest had lit. Something inside--oil, tar, something--had burst and spread the fire throughout the building.

  As Tejohn helped Javien out of the mud, the grunts began to scream in pain and terror. They were terrible sounds, and no matter how much he hated those creatures and their Blessing, the cries they made as they burned to death made him sick.

  He and Javien had been lucky. Every plan depended on good fortune to some degree, but Fury and The Great Way had favored them.

  “Grateful am I,” he said, “to be permitted to travel The Way.” Javien repeated the prayer just as the grunts fell quiet.

  The barn burned bright and hot in the light rain. In normal times, every soldier and farmer in the valley ought to be able to see that and come running. Tejohn wondered if anyone would come today.

  He and Javien turned to the farmhouse. The shutters had been thrown open and the windows filled with faces. The soldier who’d tried to fall on her sword was there, her expression blank. The others looked much the same.

  Tejohn laid his hand on his sword and hefted his shield. “Is there a third creature inside?” None of them answered. “Is there a third grunt inside the house with you? Come out!”

  The soldiers looked at each other as though he was speaking a foreign language.

  Javien turned toward him. “My tyr, if another of The Blessing was inside the house, wouldn’t it have charged us by now? Or tried to free its brothers?”

  “I would think so. So, why are they refusing to come out?”