The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (2 page)

“Hmm.” Tyr Twofin settled himself into his chair. Tejohn looked around the room again for Doctor Twofin, but he was still nowhere to be--
 

There he was, suddenly, standing behind the tyr’s chair on the left side. Tejohn was startled and alarmed for a moment. Hollowed-out scholars, left to their own devices, became wizards. They developed strange and dangerous spells of their own and used them without regard for oaths of loyalty, respect for others, or even the bonds of familial love. What lunatic would allow one so close to a tyr? Was the man invisible to everyone but him?
 

“So,” the tyr said, after a long pause that was supposed to suggest he was being thoughtful. Iskol Twofin was not much for playacting. “You checked the beacon carefully and made sure that he was exactly who he claimed to be.”
 

“I did, my tyr,” Granny Nin said. “Most carefully.”

“But what about his bodyguard? Did you check him out as well?”
 

Granny was stymied by that question. She looked at Tejohn with alarm and confusion, as though she had never even thought to worry about him.
 

“It’s not her fault,” Tejohn said. “I told her my name was Ondel Ulstrik.”
 

Tyr Twofin gave him the same blank look the hollowed-out scholar did. “If he speaks without my permission again, cut out his tongue. I don’t care who he is.”
 

Fire take it all, Tejohn shut his mouth. He should have known better than to try to help Granny Nin or anyone else in a situation like this. Let her talk herself out of danger. She’d probably done it often enough.
 

“Who?” she called. “Who? Who? What has he done? Who is he?”
 

“You don’t know?” Tyr Twofin said, a sickly smile on his face. “That’s Tyr Tejohn Treygar, hero of Pinch Hall, helpmeet to King Ellifer Italga, sword- and spearmaster to the prince.”
 

Granny Nin looked at him in shock. He half expected her to be horrified, but instead, she looked at him as if he was a foreign coin. She had no idea what to do with him and whether he was worth keeping. “I had no idea. Do you think him a spy, my tyr?”
 

“I believe him to be an assassin,” Tyr Twofin said calmly. “I believe he’s come to murder my own brother and me as well, if he gets the chance.”
 

Tejohn knew a taunt when he heard one but he hadn’t forgotten that the tyr had promised to cut out his tongue. He kept quiet, although he couldn’t keep his expression stoic.
 

Tyr Twofin grinned and leaned forward in his chair. “Don’t like that, do you? You don’t like that we Twofins, of a small and largely forgotten holdfast, could
see right through you
. Your palace games will impress no one here. I’ll have the truth out of you before the turn of the moon,
my tyr
, and you will tell me gladly. Then I will know when the Italga troops will be coming, who will be leading them, and where we can find Amlian Italga herself!”
 

Paranoid. The man had gone mad.
 

“King Shunzik” Finstel had called Tejohn an assassin, too, but he had reason to fear his enemies. He was surrounded by them on all sides—in fact, his western borders were already suffering Bendertuk raids.
 

But the Twofin walls had not been marked by blood or fire. No one had come to break down those gates. Who would bother? Even the pass they commanded into the Sweeps was little used; Durdric fighters and alligaunts haunted this westernmost end, and the land was too swampy for the herding clans. Granny Nin and her tiny convoy might have been the largest caravan the Twofin people could expect to see.

They were a backwater and always had been. Poor Iskol Twofin, how that must have galled him.
 

“Well?” the old tyr shouted. “Aren’t you even going to deny it?”

Tejohn cleared his throat. “With your kind permission to speak, my tyr.”
 

Tyr Twofin’s eyes grew wide with anger, but he kept it in check. Doctor Twofin, still standing at his side, stared at Tejohn with all the warm comfort of a hungry owl. “You have it,” the old man said.
 

“I have sworn an oath of loyalty to Ellifer and Amlian Italga. If they are alive and active, I would be grateful if you would tell me where they are. I should return to them immediately.”
 

“Pshht,” the old tyr said with a wave of his hand. He didn’t looked surprised by Tejohn’s response, but he didn’t look particularly troubled, either. “We’ve all heard the stories. We know that Amlian and Ellifer escaped the carnage of that first day of Festival in the Palace of Song and Morning. We know this because Queen Amlian had mastered a spell the entire empire thought lost: the Eighth Gift of the Evening People. We know they withdrew with nineteen hundred spears and four hundred bows to a secret holdfast in the east.”
 

Tejohn couldn’t resist asking, “Who told you all this?”
 

“Travelers,” the old tyr said with satisfaction. “Travelers passing through the gates of our city. We have spoken to dozens of them, people who knew nothing of each other, who had no chance to conspire before they came here, and they all tell similar stories. The king and queen of Peradain are alive, and they’re using the grunts to clear out the lands of their most troublesome peoples.”
 

“I know you will not believe me,” Tejohn said, “but those stories are false.”
 

“Hah! We have heard it multiple times! From many sources!”
 

Javien cleared his throat. “If I may speak, my tyr.” Tyr Twofin did not bother to answer, just nodded and waved at him to give him permission. “We have heard such stories as well. The common folk are spreading them from town to town, caravan to caravan. Rumors always spread in times of war. There’s no way to stop it.”
 

“Baseless rumors, eh? Common folk telling each other the same tall tales. Is that what you’d have me believe? I guess you would know better.”
 

“He wouldn’t,” Tejohn said. “I would. As I’m sure your brother told you, I was there, in Peradain, on the first day of the Festival. I saw the gate open. I saw the grunts come through. I saw Queen Amlian Italga die.”
 

A murmur went through the crowd at that, which Tyr Twofin did his best to ignore. Doctor Twofin still showed no sign that anything they were saying mattered to him in the slightest. Tejohn tried to see if his cheeks were wet with tears, but there was not enough light.

“And yet,” Tyr Twofin said, “if your beloved king and queen had sent you out into the world to spread that story, you would do so happily. You would look me in the eye and say anything they had commanded you. Would you not?”
 

“I would do whatever the king and queen asked of me, if it was within my power.”
 

“See!” The old tyr lunged out of his chair and advanced on Tejohn, his face flushed. He seemed to think he had scored a debating point. “You admit that you would lie to me!”
 

“If the king had commanded it, of course I would. I swore myself to his service.” Tejohn had given up hope of convincing the tyr to spare his life. Now he spoke to impress the others standing in the room in the hopes one or more would intercede on their behalf. All he had to do was convince them he was valuable. “The king made no such command. He was at the fore of the battle from the moment it was joined. I did not see him die, but he was lost in the confusion of battle.”
 

“And yet, we hear persistent rumors that the queen spirited the king away, using the Eighth Gift.”
 

Tejohn tried to recall which spell was the eighth. Had he ever heard Doctor Twofin or one of the other scholars in the palace talk about it? “I don’t know that spell.”

“It’s the teleportation spell,” Javien said.
 

Doctor Twofin moved from behind the tyr’s chair in a sudden rush. He stood over Javien’s kneeling form and held his hand above the priest’s head as though he was judging the heat of a campfire. “This one,” Doctor Twofin said, “is a scholar. I can feel the magic in him.”
 

“Take him to the stocks!” Tyr Twofin shouted, his voice cracking. “Heat the brands! I’ll have the Eighth Gift out of him or I’ll have his heart’s blood on my hands!”
 

Two spears grabbed Javien by the elbows and lifted him to his feet.
 

“There is no Eighth Gift!” the beacon shouted. “It was lost generations ago! Deliberately! I don’t know it. No one does!”
 

Tejohn forced himself to look away from the young priest’s terrified expression. He could feel his urge to fight building in him, like a spark struggling to become a bonfire. “Even I have heard the stories about that spell,” Tejohn said calmly. “Didn’t the Eighth Festival king, whatever his name, have every scholar who had learned it executed? Like you, he feared assassination.”
 

“That’s what he claimed at the time, and I’ll have you know his name was King Imbalt Winslega. But think about it: does it really make sense that a Peradaini king would turn on his most valuable allies, the scholars of Peradain, to destroy a single spell? I don’t think so. It’s the scholars who have kept the Peradaini in power all these generations, and we Twofins are not so gullible as to believe that they give up power of any kind. No,
my tyr,
 
the kings of Peradain would never destroy a spell. They would only keep it secret. They would want it for themselves.”
 

“You don’t think they would give up power,” Tejohn said, “but you believe they destroyed their own palace, killed everyone in the Scholars’ Tower, then razed their own capital city. After that, they loosed the grunts on the lands closest to them, which are filled with their closest allies. And they gave up all this power so they could
reconquer
their old empire all over again? With less than two thousand spears?” He bowed his head. “I confess I am startled by this theory. It’s true that I am a tyr, but I wasn’t born one. I was raised among the commonfolk. This sort of devious court intrigue is beyond me.”
 

“Don’t play that game with me!” Tyr Twofin shouted. He looked almost amused. “You couldn’t have been spending so much time with Amlian Italga without learning a few tricks!”
 

“In truth,” Tejohn said, “I saw very little of the queen, and even less of the king. I was certainly not their confidant. My purpose in the palace was to train the prince in the shield and spear, and to--”
 

“Ah-ha! You see?” Tyr Twofin’s expression was bright with victory. Nothing Tejohn had said penetrated his certitude. “You called him ‘the prince.’ If King Ellifer were truly dead, you would have called him ‘king.’ We are not as gullible out here in the rural lands as you people in the cities seem to think.”
 

“It was just habit, my tyr,” Tejohn answered truthfully.
 

“A dangerous habit,” Tyr Twofin said, still grinning. “Those who don’t show Italgas proper respect often find themselves floating out into deep water, if you know what I mean.”
 

“I was merely the boy’s tutor.”
 

Doctor Twofin bent low and spoke quietly into his brother’s ear. Tejohn could not hear what he said, but the tyr narrowed his eyes and became thoughtful.

“Despite myself, I’m almost ready to believe you.”
 

“Did...” Tejohn knew the dangers of asking questions in his position. “May I ask a question?”
 

“Yes,” the old tyr said.
 

“Did your brother break his oath to me?”
 

“Ah.” Tyr Twofin steepled his fingers. “I thought that would be it. He did break his oath, by my order. As his tyr, I ordered him to lay aside all other oaths laid upon him, for my sake. He is no longer a Peradaini scholar, and owes nothing to the royal family. The flying cart he delivered to me is too valuable to be turned over to another Italga; we could not spare the spears to guard him on the overland trip. This end of the Sweeps is thick with alligaunts, as you know. I assume this is why you came to assassinate him.”
 

Tejohn shook his head. “If I had known we would be passing through Twofin lands, I would have gone by a different road. Whatever is between the scholar and me, my mission for Lar Italga comes first.”
 

“Yes, this spell,” Twofin said. “My brother shared your story with me. To me, it sounds like you’re trying to put another Italga on the throne of skulls.”
 

“Peradain is fallen, the city is burned, its spears killed or scattered. I think it’s time you turned your attention away from the nonexistent plots of dead kings and toward the enemy spreading across Kal-Maddum.”
 

Tyr Twofin smirked. “Why should I take counsel from you, an imperial puppet?”

“You owe me a debt,” Tejohn said. “I rescued your brother from a Finstel prison.”
 

“So you did,” Tyr Twofin responded, still smirking. “So you did.
 
Tell me, what boon can I grant you in payment of this debt?”

Free me so I can see my wife and children again.
 

But no, Tejohn could not ask for that.

Chapter 2