The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (26 page)

A dark-furred beast pounced into the doorway and snarled at them.
 

The princess screamed, her piercing voice astonishingly loud in the enclosed space. Tejohn was moving forward even before he had a chance to think about it. His shield high, his spear hand empty, he reached for his sword—no, he remembered at the last moment, the mace.

His hand closed on the mace, lifting it from the hook on his belt, when his shield struck the grunt. The beast had been reaching for the princess, but Tejohn knocked its arm aside, and she fell backward onto the base of the sleepstone.
 

The grunt looked at him with wild hunger, then
shoved.
Tejohn’s shield pressed against his body, trapping the mace. He held on to the haft with all of his strength; to lose it would be to lose all of their lives. Assuming it would even work.
 

As those thoughts raced through his head, the grunt’s shove became irresistible. Tejohn’s shield pressed against his ribs, his thigh, and his cheek, lifting him off his feet with undeniable force.
 

This is going to kill me.
He flew back with shocking force, and he barely had a chance to register that thought, and the sense of loss and regret that went with it, when he struck the pile of baskets stacked against the wall. The impact was still painful, but it didn’t take his life.
 

As he slumped to the floor in the pile of tumbling baskets, he saw the princess scrabble to the side, making her way around the sleepstone. Cazia threw the glowing rock at the grunt’s head with all her strength, but the beast ducked low, coming frighteningly close to the princess’s bare legs.
 

Tejohn held up his mace and was surprised to see that it had snapped in half. The anti-magic stone was gone. It was only then that he realized there was something hard under his left knee that made his whole leg tingle. The grunt reached out to Cazia; she stumbled back, her hands moving quickly.
 

It was no use. The thing was too close for her to finish her spell. In desperation, Tejohn grabbed at the thing beneath his leg--please be the kinzchu stone--and flung it toward the creature.
 

It struck the beast on the shoulder. The grunt collapsed instantly, its outstretched claws tearing the flesh of Cazia’s bare forearms. She yelped and staggered away as it flopped onto the stone floor.

Then it screamed. The sound echoed off the walls like a war horn. Tejohn didn’t need the translation stone to know that was nothing more than a wordless cry of grief and pain. A death cry.
 

Little smoldering fires broke out in its fur. The smoke was white, thin, and smelled of ironwood. Then the flames spread suddenly, spreading over its entire body in a rush. The white smoke billowed toward the ceiling like a mushroom. Tejohn fell to his knees to breath the sweet air near the floor and he saw, stirring among the ashes, a human form.
 

It was a man, plump as a successful merchant, with a bald head and a vacuous pug of an expression. He was utterly naked but for the gray ash coating his skin. He began to cough and choke, instinctively rolling out of the lingering smoke and fine ash toward cleaner air.
 

A cure. It had worked! It had truly worked! Tejohn had hoped against all reason that the stones would undo The Blessing, and for once, it had gone his way.
 

Finally, they had a weapon to use against the grunts. Not a flying cart the creatures were able to smash apart. Not a scholar’s spell that would put an end to honest soldiering. Just a little magic stone that scholars could not even touch without losing their magic. Tejohn snatched the broken mace from the floor. The handle was slightly charred but the stone was intact. It had worked. This was a war that soldiers could win.
 

Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.

Tejohn wiped at the man’s face, trying to clear the ashes so he could breath comfortably.

“Where’s Ivy?” Cazia asked, struggling to her feet. Blood ran down her arms onto the backs of her hands, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
 

She stood and went around the sleepstone to the edge of the pit, then cried out. Tejohn was beside her in moments.
 

Down in the bottom of the pit, lying among the bones, was the still form of the little princess. A shattered rib had pierced her side completely through.

Chapter 16

Cazia’s entire body prickled with goose flesh.
I cost Ivy her life.
But no, she hadn’t died yet. Cazia looked for a rope she could drop into the pit below and saw instead a slender wooden ladder leaning against the wall.
 

“MOVE!” she shouted, bulling past Old Stoneface and stepping over the former grunt as though he was nothing more than a bundle of dirty rags. She snatched up the ladder, jammed one end down into the pit—taking care to set it opposite where Ivy had landed—then practically leaped onto it.
 

It was almost too much for the ladder to take, and she cursed herself when she felt it bow under her weight. Fury favored her this time; it did not break. She scrambled down the rungs into the stink of rotten flesh and landed beside the princess.
 

It was bad. Very bad. The little girl’s pale face was paler than Cazia had ever seen it, and she was so still. Her breathing was shallow and rapid.
 

“Don’t pull the bone out,” Tejohn called down to her as though she was a complete fool. Cazia scooped the girl into her arms, fighting to keep her balance as the slimy bones shifted beneath her feet. Then she hurried up the ladder.
 

Careful. Careful. Losing her balance or dropping Ivy would almost certainly kill her. Cazia couldn’t have that on her conscience, not when they were so close to a sleepstone that she could have lifted her head and spit on it.
 

“There’s a stone in the pouch at her belt!” she snapped as she came near the top of the ladder. “She brought it in case I needed it. You have to cut it free before we put her on the sleepstone. Hurry!”
 

Tejohn reached down with his little knife and cut the pouch free. He threw it behind him and reached for the girl.
 

“Hurry, hurry!” Cazia was already barking at him, her fear and impatience growing so huge inside her that she thought she might burst into tears. Tejohn scooped the girl up as though she was as light as an summer robe, pivoted smoothly to the broad stone bed, then gently laid her on her side atop it.
 

Cazia scrambled over the top of the ladder and moved beside him. Ivy was so pale. So pale! Tejohn had a tight grip on the thick end of the rib where it protruded from the girl’s back. Cazia wanted to shout at him to both take it out and leave it in. Finally, he did pull it out and cast it into the pit. Blood poured out of the little girl’s back.
 
So much blood.

“Too soon!” Cazia cried. “You pulled it out too soon!”

“I’ve done this before,” Tejohn answered, and the calm in his voice startled her. Cazia took a deep, shuddering breath, then helped him ease the princess onto her back. “It will be a near thing.”
 

“She’s so small,” Cazia said. Where were these words coming from? When did she start saying trite, obvious things?
 

Except Ivy was small. Tiny, in fact. Her body was so narrow and her shoulders so bony.
 

Tejohn put a hand on Cazia’s shoulder. It was meant to be comforting, and to her surprise, it was. “She must have fallen while she was fleeing from… What’s this?”

There were two more puncture wounds in Ivy’s calf, much smaller than the one through her back. Of course, it made sense that she would have landed on more than just the one rib. Cazia was sure there were other marks on other parts of her.

But a little voice in the back of her mind was crying out an alarm.

“Is that a bite?” Tejohn asked, giving voice to her fear. “Could the grunt have bitten her?”

Cazia’s thoughts raced. Everything had happened so fast! Ivy had been scrambling away from the creature and it had fallen toward her…

All of her strength left her in a rush and she had to grab hold of the edge of the sleepstone to steady herself. Vilavivianna of Goldgrass Hill, princess of the Ergoll people, descendants of the Chieftains of the Forty Valleys, had been cursed by The Blessing.
 

Cazia burst into tears. After everything she’d done to look after the girl, after everything they’d been through together, Cazia had finally failed her. She’d promised to bring the princess home safely and she had. She had
done it
. Ivy had been reunited with her parents and, if she hadn’t stowed away on the bottom of that stupid cart, she would be safe still.
 

A bright, hot flush of anger rushed through her. Why hadn’t Ivy done what she had been told? Why couldn’t she
ever
do what she was told?
 

Not that Cazia was such a great role model. Fire and Fury, why couldn’t the grunt have bitten her instead? How could the princess return home to her people now?
 

“We have the stones,” Tejohn said. Cazia’s head hung down and she couldn’t see his face, but she knew his expression would have only enraged her. “The sleepstone brings on the curse quickly, but we can undo it. In fact, we can pull her off partway through if we have to.”

“It’s temporary,” Cazia said.
 

“What do you mean?” Tejohn glanced down at the pot-bellied man still lying on the floor. His horrible bare ass was covered with gray ash.
 

“The effect of the stones is temporary. My magic goes away but it always comes back.”
 

Tejohn’s hand dropped to his sword. Did he even realize he was doing that? “Maybe.”
 

“You’re right,” Cazia said glumly. “Maybe it will be permanent. But what if it isn’t? How am I supposed to bring her home if she’s cursed?”

He lifted the charred, broken handle of his mace and examined the stone at the end. It was still secure and unmarked. “We will cure her again. If we have to, we will make a nice piece of jewelry for her.”
 

“She would have to wear it for the rest of her life!”
 

The old soldier stepped close to her and put his hand on her shoulder again. She was struck suddenly by how tall he was—even more than most—and how heavy his touch was. “There are worse fates.”
 

He was right. She knew he was right, but it annoyed her anyway. Cazia didn’t want Ivy to suffer a less awful fate. She deserved better.
 

She turned toward the fat old man and cast a water spell, spraying him down to rinse off the horrible ash. It didn’t work very well; the ash stuck to his skin stubbornly. The water pooled around his body, then began to flow toward her.
 

She sidestepped, feeling a shudder of revulsion at the idea that it might touch her. The man needed someone to scrub him down, but Cazia wasn’t going to do it, and Old Stoneface was standing even farther back than she was. She kept the water spraying over him while he lay on the stone floor like a sick cow.
 

The next time she cast the spell, she made the water much colder. It wasn’t the glacial cold that she’d used to punish Ghoron, but it roused the man from his stupor anyway.
 

“Food,” he muttered. “Fire and Fury, but I have not had real food in—how long have I been…”
 

“We don’t know,” Tejohn said. “When were you transformed?”
 

“I was bitten just before midsummer,” the man said. “I thought we would be safe in my house, but the…my family…” He gaped at the floor, then at the two of them. He examined his dirty hands, then touched his belly. “Where am I? What happened to me?”
 

“You’re in the Sweeps,” Tejohn said. Cazia suddenly found herself aggravated beyond reason with the conversation. She turned back to the sleepstone and stroked Ivy’s faint yellow hair. She was still breathing and her color seemed a little better. It had taken Cazia a little while to get used to the idea that the girl’s fair skin—with the bluish veins showing through in some places—was not a sign of illness. Now she just had to convince herself that it wasn’t a sign the princess was fading into death.
 

“And,” the old soldier continued, “you’re the first person to be cured of The Blessing. That we know of, anyway.”
 

“You were wise to cure me,” the fat man said, as though they’d made some kind of careful selection. “Can I have a blanket, at least? The water was chilly. And I still need food.”
 

“We can share some of our meatbread,” Tejohn said, setting his pack on the floor. “And you can wear my cloak for now.”
 

The man sighed as though he’d been offered gruel, but he draped himself in the wool cloak gladly. “I have a reward in mind for both of you. My home was not as secure against the invaders as I’d hoped, but I have more than a few silver bolds, golden pinches, and golden petals. In fact, the reward will be even more substantial if you can cure my wife, children, and grandch—”