The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (49 page)

“Not as bad as it could have been. How are things there?”
 

“Complicated. Still, the people are pulling together. Provisions will be short come wintertime unless we do something about it.”
 

“We need sleepstones here, my tyr. We need sleepstones very badly.”
 

He leaned forward and peered at something in her expression. “Cazia, are you all right?”
 

“I’m very tired. More tired than… There was a fight today,” she said, and suddenly the memories rushed back to her: the steward with the broken leg waving at her to run, the young man who burst apart as a stone struck him, Issilas standing patiently beside her as people screamed and died around them. Cazia shut her eyes because there were tears again.
Scholars must never weep.
“They…they were so brave.”
 

Tyr Treygar was kind enough to wait quietly while she composed herself. The servant and her guard politely looked away. Fire and Fury, why had she let them linger in the doorway?
 

“I’m sorry,” she said when she was ready to speak.
 

“You don’t have to apologize to me. I have felt the same way many times. I have some good news; there’s a medical scholar here. I’ll send him to you.”
 

“Thank you. Truly.”
 

“Can you fly back here? There’s something I think you should see.”
 

“That might be difficult. They’ve sort of made me their tyr.”
 

For a moment, she thought Stoneface might actually laugh, but he didn’t. Good. She was too tired to lose her temper. “Congratulations. Can you come?”
 

You do know I’m only fifteen.
“I will,” she said. The servant and guard became restless. “But I touched a kinzchu stone during the fighting. I’ll have to wait for my magic to come back.” She didn’t want to say this next part in front of the servant and bodyguard, but it seemed she had no choice. “My tyr, we can defeat the grunts now, but doesn’t it seem that there is more to this?”
 

Treygar nodded. “That’s why I want you to come back up here, my tyr. We have one more people to contact. Hopefully, they will have answers for us, too.”
 

He draped the cloth over his mirror, breaking the connection. Cazia did the same, plunging the little room into darkness. “Sleep,” she said. Could the granite kinzchu stone she touched be the reason she was so exhausted? “I have to sleep right now or I’m going to fall over.”
 

The servant curtsied. Her guard said, “We’ll show you to the tyr’s quarters.”
 

Ugh. She could just imagine the way her father’s rooms would look. “No, my stomach isn’t strong enough for that. Take me to the room where Issilas is resting.” They started down the stairs. Cazia turned to her guard.
Mustn’t learn his name.
“Did you hear that a medical scholar would be coming tomorrow?”
 

“I did, my tyr,” he said.
 

Cazia wished he would go back to calling her
miss.
“Well, your holdfast was difficult to find in all these woods. Can you set a signal fire in the sentry tower or something?”
 

“We used to burn green wood and oil to make a column of smoke to signal visitors from the air…”

There was an unspoken
but
at the end of his sentence. “Do that, then. I want the cart to get here as quickly as it can.”
 

He spoke as if asking a question was an act of bravery.
 
“Won’t that attract the grunts, too?”
 

“Let’s hope so.”
 

Issilas was still in bed, and a scowling chambermaid hovered over her. She began to sit up as Cazia entered, but the maid pushed her gently onto the bed. The cool compresses over her ribs had dried out, but Cazia couldn’t cast the Fifth Gift yet. She took a bowl of water--not cold enough but it would have to do--from a table by the door and wet the compresses again. The girl hissed with surprise but didn’t otherwise complain.
 

Cazia stood and realized the chambermaid was gaping at her. Had they never seen a tyr comfort an injured servant before? She shooed everyone out of the room except the injured girl and lay down on the second bed. She knew it wasn’t even dark outside yet, but sleep could not be denied any longer. She fell asleep wondering if her throat would be cut before she woke, and whether it would hurt.
 

The same chambermaid woke her in the morning. Issilas was asleep, so Cazia signaled for quiet as she put on her robes. Fire and Fury, the girl had gone pasty white overnight. She wasn’t healing; she was getting worse.
 

Cazia’s bodyguard waited outside her door, hand on his sword. He suddenly looked very like the palace guards who had tormented her in the Palace of Song and Morning, and she decided it was better not to learn his name after all.
 

Breakfast was spare, which suited her fine. A flying cart, she was told, was landing even as they spoke. Cazia ditched her food and raced out of the holdfast into the courtyard.
 

A small crowd had gathered as the cart slowly descended. The driver leaned out over the rail, scowling at the muddy yard below. They’d have to make a stone platform for the carts so they wouldn’t get mired.
 

But when the cart’s only passenger stood up and began to struggle over the rail, she exclaimed with delight.
 

“Doctor Twofin!” Cazia raced down the stairs across the yard, the crowd parting for her. The old man had barely gotten his boots on the ground when she threw her arms around him. Her former tutor gasped at the sudden collision, and Cazia drew back from him suddenly.
 

Great Way, he looked so frail.
 

“Little Spinner, thank you for reuniting us again,” he said. “I feared I would never see another friendly face.”
 

This did not sound like the Doctor Twofin she knew. Where was Fury’s spark, which had always seemed so strong in him? “How did you get out of Peradain?” she asked, unsure what to say.
 

“I was taken out. Not… Not rescued. Imprisoned. By Tyr Finstel. I was made to do magic, until…”
 

He couldn’t finish. The old teacher lifted his hands and stared at them, as though expecting them to be covered with blood. Cazia took hold of them gently. “I have been in your situation,” she said.
 

“No,” he said, his face almost bloodless, “you don’t have the training to do the things that I have done. The terrible--”

“Shh.”
I feared I would never see another friendly face.
“Welcome to the Freewell holdfast, where you will be made welcome and treated with respect. Whatever happened before is in the past. It’s forgotten, as if you have been taken by The Blessing and then cured.”
 

“It’s a great gift,” he said. “It’s a great gift to be allowed to start over after….to do good again.”
 

The roar of a grunt echoed from out of the forest, and everyone fell silent. The Watch Commander was suddenly beside her.
 

“The walls are well guarded,” her bodyguard translated. “The fletchers have spent most of the night fashioning arrows.”

“Thank you.” To Doctor Twofin, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Not in the slightest,” he answered. “Tyr Treygar tells me that you have had quite an adventure.”
 

“I’ll tell you about it this evening,” she said, “as long as you promise to believe everything I say. Right now, though, we need those sleepstones. People are suffering. In fact, I have a brave little girl in the holdfast who might not last the day without your help.”

Chapter 31

Three days after Tejohn spoke to her, Cazia Freewell’s cart appeared in the skies above Saltstone, and it was not a moment too soon. From the time servants and soldiers had hauled away the granite blocks pinning the holdfast doors shut, it had been one headache after another. Doctor Twofin had woken in one of the Twofin dungeons, seemingly cured of his madness, but the merchants and holdfast bureaucrats insisted he be tried and hanged.
 

Never mind that he was the only medical scholar in the world, as far as they knew. Never mind that nothing he had done had truly been his fault—and how painful it was for the man who slew Doctor Rexler to make that argument. They wanted blood. Tejohn wouldn’t allow it.
 

Unfortunately, as the mood turned against him, it also turned against Lowtower, Bluepetal, and Redegg, the three men he’d left in charge. Planning meetings were becoming contentious, with a growing faction of locals determined to remain inside their walls, where they felt safe. There was also a push to make servants of any outsiders who were cured within the walls.
 

Tejohn alienated them even more when he promised to hang anyone who tried to implement that law.
 

Luckily, the Evening Person they’d retrieved from the Marsh Gate had more or less taken his side. When he’d been brought into the hall, he’d haughtily informed the merchants that he would make all their lands go fallow before he let himself be pressed into servitude. Bluepetal had immediately declared it would be immoral to punish a man for what he’d done under the influence of a curse, and the Evening Person confirmed that going hollow was very like The Blessing: both were possession by an outside power.
 

That had blunted the enthusiasm for the old scholar’s execution among most of the citizens.
 

So, when rumors spread that some within the holdfast planned to murder the old scholar in his cell, Tejohn had roused him and put him in his cart in the early dawn hours. The time since had been…difficult.
 

So, it lightened his mood considerably to have his breakfast interrupted by word of an approaching cart. He hurried out into the hall.
 

The cart floated down and rotated a quarter turn as it touched down. Cazia Freewell was tied into the driver’s spot, and she wore scholar’s robes and armor, just like Lar Italga had worn in Samsit.
 

Great Way, that seemed like a lifetime ago.
 

A team of six spears marched toward her, only one of them carrying a kinzchu spear. Tejohn marched down the holdfast steps and intercepted them. “Points high, squad.”
 

“My tyr,” the sergeant said, “all visitors must be touched.” He held up his kinzchu spear. “It’s Commander Lowtower’s law.”
 

“I can vouch for this one,” Tejohn said, to their clear discomfort. He led them toward the cart, where Cazia was struggling with the last of the knots in her harness. “Cazia, it’s good to see you again. Have you been bitten since we parted?”
 

She looked up at him and smiled. Fire and Fury, she looked terrible. “Nope,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve taken a scratch or two, though.”
 

Tejohn helped her over the rail. “Let me see you. Did they stitch you up like an old curtain?” He almost called the Freewell people
barbarians,
but of course, they had no sleepstones. He should have realized she would look even worse now than she had in the mirror, before her injuries had taken color.
 

“My tyr,” the sergeant said sharply, “Commander Lowtower gave specific orders…”
 

Song knew the man was right. If he started making exceptions to the rules so soon after implementing them, everyone would. “Of course, you’re right, sergeant. Thank you for reminding me.” To Cazia he said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take your magic, just this once, but it will give you time to lie on a sleepstone.”
 

She sighed. “I suppose it’s a sensible precaution, but it’s a waste of time. First, though, let me make you some kinzchu arrowheads.
 

That startled all of them. She marched through the soldiers toward the holdfast, then began casting a spell. The sergeant looked nervous, but Tejohn laid a hand on his shoulder to calm him.
 

First, she created a granite block. It was bigger than any scholar stone Tejohn had ever seen before. Her magic really was becoming powerful. Then she cast another spell on it, then she shattered it into a thousand tiny chips.

“There!” She explained that each shard would not be as powerful as the black stones, but they would get the job done. Then she grabbed hold of the kinzchu stone at the end of the sergeant’s spear. The only evidence of its effect was an involuntary shudder.
 

“How long is your magic gone?”
 

“A day and a half at least,” she answered.
 

“Too bad. You seem to be getting stronger.”
 

“I am.” She touched the stitches in her lip. “Do you really have an empty sleepstone?”
 

“The Twofin people have been lucky. This way.” He led her into the holdfast toward the medical chambers. “Do you think you could teach that trick to the scholars we have here?”