The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (29 page)

“You couldn’t? Why not?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think the grunts can hold their breath at all. I began to drown immediately, but I caught hold of a fallen tree and pulled myself back to the air. I remember that clearing the water from my lungs was Fire-taken painful.”
 

Tejohn hadn’t known that the grunts were unable to hold their breath. That would explain why they were so shy around water, though. That information would be useful, someday. “Can you remember anything else?”

“I remember hunting. It was… You aren’t going to like this part, but I’m just going to say it. Hunting was sacred. It was like being part of the universe, like praising all the gods around us, or doing magic. Not that I’ve ever been a scholar, but hunting as a grunt is as close as I can imagine getting to letting true power flow through me and out into the world. Do you know what I mean?”

“I don’t.”
 

Winstul nodded. “You’re an honest man. Who did you come here expecting to find?”
 

“A man named Wimnell Farrabell. I’d hoped he would be able to hold out.”
 

“I’m sorry you found me instead. I know you’re disappointed, but I will do my best to help in any way I can.”

Tejohn stood. “You can start by getting off the roof. There are still ruhgrit about.”

That required a bit of explanation, but the old merchant was glad to receive it. He picked up the jug of oil and the scraper and followed Tejohn into the tower.
 

While Winstul finished cleaning, Tejohn fetched blankets and cloaks for all of them. He returned to the storeroom, vaguely pleased to be with Cazia Freewell again. She was a fighter, like him, and it felt good to be around other fighters in dangerous times.
 

Everything has changed.
He couldn’t help but think so. Scholars that could be cured when they went hollow, but remained incredibly powerful? If they saved their world, they would never be able to remake the one they’d lost. As if he would want that.
 

They covered the princess and the Evening Person, then laid out a few bedrolls opposite the broken pipe. Water still flowed from it, across the floor, and into the pit. Tejohn apologized to Cazia for breaking it, mainly because they would be unable to cover the pit and block that stench. She didn’t seem to mind. Then he sought and found the princess’s belt pouch. There was only one kinzchu stone inside.
 

It was some time later that Winstul returned from the tower, and Tejohn was startled by what he’d found. There was a woolen blanket and some light rope that he tied off on the walls around them, protecting the princess from rain. He had also found plates and bowls, a scholar’s robe for himself, and a bedrobe for the Evening Person. The bedrolls he brought were thicker and softer than the ones Tejohn had found.
 

The night was still young, but Cazia was so exhausted, she was ready to collapse. She had flown the cart all day, then faced down the grunts with Tejohn. Now that they were all in the storeroom, she added to the barricade so it blocked the entire door. Winstul made sure to prepare her bedding first, then brought her a clean cloth to tie over the cut on her face.
 

The girl fell asleep immediately, but Tejohn stayed up until Winstul was ready to sleep. They nodded to each other and lay down. Soon, Tejohn heard them all snoring.
 

Javien killed those children at the farm, and I let him.
 

They could have been cured. That was the naked fact of it. If he’d stayed his hand that day, had just dragged Javien away from that farmhouse and kept to their mission, the people they’d murdered that day would still be out there somewhere, waiting for a cure.
 

But of course he hadn’t. He was a man with weapons and a talent for using them. Every problem was solved with sharpened steel, and when he made mistakes, there was no hope of putting them right.
 

The old farm couple. The bitten soldiers. The mother cradling her small children to herself. Maybe… Maybe they would have transformed and then come hunting Javien and himself. Maybe sparing their lives would have cut short the quest Lar had given him.
 

But maybe not. He couldn’t tell himself reassuring lies, not about this.
 

The fact of it was as unavoidable as it was unbearable, like a scar he could never heal and never hide. His shame and anger were there with him, too, like a shadow self that occupied the same space he did. This was something he was never going to escape. Never.
 

Tejohn shut his eyes and, despite his turmoil, felt exhaustion finally claim him.

The princess slept all through the day and the next night. In the morning, Tejohn briefly described the water-dripping device he’d seen in the temple in Ussmajil and Winstul immediately went to work recreating one. He used the bucket, a few pieces of cut basket and some long threads from the linen bedding to design something that would drip water—cleansed by Cazia’s magic—onto the princess’s lips while she slept. The Evening Person lay on a length of bedding in the corner. He had not regained consciousness, and Tejohn began to wonder if he ever would.

When Ivy woke, she was famished but not as parched as most people healed by the sleepstone would be. Tejohn made them all sit down to a meal.
 

The girl had a patch of blue fur growing on the back of her leg where her small second injury had been. Yes, she had been bitten. Mid-meal, Tejohn handed her the pouch, and she dropped the kinzchu stone into her hand. The blue hairs smoldered and burned to ash without any other effect; Winstul wiped it away with a piece of damp cloth. The little girl looked at each of them with a shocked expression, as though she’d just been slapped.
 

Cazia hugged her. “I’m sorry. I should have done more. I’m sorry.”

Chin resting on her friend’s shoulder, the princess became absolutely still when she saw the Evening Person sleeping in the corner. When the embrace ended, she stood without a word and moved toward it, her expression utterly blank.
 

“It was one of the purple grunts,” Cazia said. “When we touched the kinzchu stone to it, the stone shattered and the grunt burned down to him. We’re waiting for him to wake up.”

Winstul laughed. “You keep switching between
it
and
him
.”

Cazia sighed. “I saw it naked, so I don’t know what to call it. They aren’t human, so I don’t know what to call them.”

Tejohn had seen the Evening People in the last Festival, of course. He’d thought the men and women looked similar to one another, but he’d believed they were men and women. Now he wasn’t sure what was true and what was glamour. “It.”

Winstul clucked his tongue. “We can always ask when our guest wakes.”

No one responded to that. The princess turned away from the sleeping figure and returned to their little circle on the floor to eat. She dropped the stone back into the pouch and said, “Have I been cured for good?”
 

“We don’t know yet,” Cazia answered.
 

“Speaking of which,” Tejohn said, “Winstul, show your bite wound.”
 

“Of course!” He bared his left forearm. They could see the puncture wound scars, but there were no patches of blue fur.
 

Collectively, they sighed and began their meal. When they finished, Cazia and Winstul began to gather their things.
 

“We’re not going yet,” Tejohn said. “We still have to deal with that hand.”
 

Cazia held up her left hand. “It’s been more than a month. Nearly a month and a half. A sleepstone won’t heal an injury this old. I mean, I can move it well enough to cast spells, but…”
 

“We can’t bring the sleepstone to the Village Without A Name, so we’re staying an extra day for you to be healed. Hungry?”
 

She stood. “No.”
 

Tejohn stood, too.
 
The medical scholar at Fort Samsit had cured his old knee injury with a needle, but they didn’t have one. The most slender weapon they had was the little princess’s Indregai dagger. “Your knife, please?”
 

The girl became even more pale, if that was possible. “No.”
 

Tejohn was startled. Did she think he was a threat to her?
 

“It’s all right,” Cazia said. “It’s all right.”
 

The princess reluctantly drew her blade and offered it. Tejohn accepted it with a bow of his head.

“Well,” Cazia said nervously, little beads of sweat appearing on her forehead, “it’s not that I don’t trust you, because I do; you’ve earned that. It’s—”
 

“It’s that I am famous for killing a hollowed scholar. I understand.” He told her about the medical scholar in Fort Samsit who had cured his old knee injury with a needle. Cazia seemed ready to accept this; she lay back on the sleepstone, and as soon as her eyes fell closed, Tejohn slid the knife into her palm exactly through the scar.
 

“Wait!” the princess cried. She raced forward just quickly enough to see the tip of her own blade protrude from the back of Cazia’s hand. Tejohn withdrew it, laid the scholar’s hand on the stone beside her, then wiped the knife clean to return it.
 

“I don’t want it!” Ivy shouted. Her eyes were wide and her teeth bared. Fire and Fury, what was this child upset about? “You just stabbed my friend with my knife. Mine! Don’t you understand what that means?”

“Yes,” Tejohn said. “It means two things: that she’s going to get better and that you’re not getting this knife back.”

“Oh, very funny!” she fumed. “Keep it. You don’t understand and you don’t deserve to.”
 

She spun around to put her back to him, facing the Evening Person. Then she glanced back, as though she wanted to change her mind, but she kept silent.
 

In the middle of the night, Tejohn felt Cazia’s hand on his shoulder. He woke quickly. “Are you well?”

By the dim glow of the lightstone, he could see that she was smiling. “Thank you. I don’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt any more.”
 

He nodded and she went to her bedroll.
 

When they woke the next morning, the Evening Person was wide awake, sitting up, and staring at them.

Chapter 18

From the moment the Evening Person met Cazia’s gaze, she hated him. She offered him water, smiled, and agreed politely to use
him
instead of
it
, then apologized that their only rations contained meat, which he couldn’t or wouldn’t eat.
 

Still, although the creature’s face was humanlike, it looked just different enough to seem wrong, especially now that it was awake. The eyes were too high on the face, the nose too short, the mouth too low and much, much too broad for that pointy chin. The long, pointed ears were low on the skull. The strands of hair were much too thick and grew straight back from its…his face.
 

Were it not for the golden eyes with pupils shaped like a shallow crescent on its back, both points turned upward, she would have taken him for an ill-born child that had somehow survived to adulthood.
 

He stared at them with a strange mix of alarm and bitter resignation, assuming she could understand his expressions. “We are not planning to kill you,” she finally said, hoping he would be less annoying if he was more relaxed.
 

“And yet you could,” he responded. His voice sounded strangely normal.
 

“Of course we could,” Tejohn said gruffly, as though it was a decision he had to make every few moments.
 

Cazia saw the Evening Person glance at the spears Tejohn had brought into the room. She had a feeling he was not worried about the spear point. “That’s not what you mean, isn’t it? You’ve seen the kinzchu stones we’re carrying. They’re dangerous to you, aren’t they? Lethal?”

The truth became clear even without a direct answer. The stones stole magic, and the Evening People, reportedly, were suffused with magic.
 

“Is that true?” Ivy asked, her voice strangely flat.
 

The golden-eyed man did not respond right away. He looked at each of the humans in turn with that strange, flat expression, then finally said. “It is true.”
 

“Ah,” Winstul said, clearly uncomfortable. “You should not concern yourself, er, my tyr.”
 

“He’s not a tyr,” Tejohn snapped.
 

“True,” the merchant said. “Yes, very true. But he is still an honored guest, yes? And he certainly does not need to fear us. If we wished you dead, you would never have woken up. Do you see?”
 

The Evening Person blinked three times, his face impassive. If Winstul’s logic was supposed to reassure him, it didn’t seem to have worked. “I understand.”

“May I ask your name?”
 

“It is Dhe.”

Tejohn cleared his throat. “Welcome to Kal-Maddum, Dhe. Do you know where you are?” The Evening Person nodded. “Good. We are going to take you to a safe place. Then you are going to answer some questions.”