The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (14 page)

Fire take her, she meant
when she returned to civilization
.
When.

“It will be light soon.”
 

Kinz was right. The eastern sky had faint traces of dawn. If they were going to move, it would have to be now, while the dark still hid them. Otherwise, they would be stuck in the forest for another day, hiding from enemy patrols.
 

The three of them crept from tree to tree, heading south toward the mountains. There were no signs of the Tilkilit, except for that single sentry. She could see firelight dimly flickering in the cleft behind him.
 

“He’ll see us,” Kinz said. They all looked eastward, where the ground became stony and the trees sparse. The moon had not yet gone down. “There isn’t enough cover that way, and we’re only going to find more sentries if we head westward.”

“Back!” Ivy whispered, pulling them closer to the tree trunk. A shadow moved against the stars above them. One of the giant eagles was hunting this part of the valley. No, there were two. Maybe more.
 

“Inzu’s breath,” Kinz said. “We need a distraction to get across this open ground.”

The Tilkilit’s fire. The more Cazia thought about it, the more she thought there must be some way she could use it. It was small enough that the overhang hid it from the eagles above, but--

“I have an idea,” she said, a little too loudly. She searched back in her memory for the opening to the Ninth Gift. Doctor Twofin had taught it to her when she was younger than Ivy, but she hadn’t practiced it much.
 

It was a spell for fighting fires. Six months before the Ninth Festival, half of Peradain had burned to the ground, and the Evening People had given the Peradaini king a spell to put out fires at a distance. A great distance, in fact. No other Gift had a range like the Ninth.
 

According the Doctor Twofin, the king had been dismayed at first, until one of his commanders used it to extinguish the cook fires of the Paydl holdfast for forty-two days straight. The local tyrant eventually threw open his gates and broke his spear against the stony road.
 

Cazia herself had used it in the palace when the servants were especially cruel to her, at least until Doctor Twofin had ordered her to stop.
 

There it was in her memory: the opening mental image was an expanding cloud. She moved through the motions and visualizations of the spell, feeling her own magic reaching out to quench the fire.
 

But not all the way. She was careful to make the fire die down but not go all the way out. The sentry needed a few moments to notice, but once he did, he quickly set to tending it.
 

From where she crouched, Cazia couldn’t see what the Tilkilit was doing, but she saw him move toward it and do something. With luck, he would not simply rearrange the fuel. He would add more.
 

She pressed harder, squeezing the fire down without killing it. Her conversation with Kinz about her water spells came back to her, but she tried to clear them out of her mind. No, it didn’t make sense that she was squeezing fire, but that was what she did.
 

The sentry continued to tend the fire. When Cazia saw him draw back in what she imagined to be consternation, she broke the spell.
 

As she hoped, the Tilkilit had been adding fuel to his dying fire, and this new fuel caught and flared. It was brighter than she’d dared hope for. The light glowed against the vine tower and some of the stones of the cliff.
 

Immediately, from high above came the shriek of one of the giant eagles, then another and another. Cazia heard their beating wings before she saw their silhouettes hovering near the sentry’s post. Their cries were piercing and full of rage. The temptation to grasp the translation stone in her pocket was strong, but Cazia resisted it.
 

Ivy had already sprinted out of cover.
 

Cazia ran close behind. The eagles swarmed above them and to the right, raising a terrible noise and panic around the sentry’s position. One bird tore at the vine tower. Another touched down on the overhang as though trying to push it onto the warrior below.
 

Slipping her hand into her pocket, Cazia gripped the stone. Instantly, the shrieks of the monstrous birds became words.
 

“Make it touch the ground! Drive that weight away from here! Drive it to the ground and tear it apart!”

She stumbled, almost dropping her translation gem. Kinz caught her elbow and helped her upright, then they ran again. Cazia put the stone in her pocket and left it there. She didn’t need to hear any more.
 

The spot Ivy ran toward was sheltered, but not well. Cazia already had the Eleventh Gift in her mind as she came up on it. Again, she began the spell so that the stone she crumbled would fall out of the wall onto the ground around them. Then she did it again and again. They climbed inside the open space; Song knew how much she hated the feeling of crawling across sharp, broken stone. She cast the spell again.
 

Stones tumbled down around her, filling the space behind. She heard Ivy and Kinz follow her into the tunnel but ignored them. She cast again and again, going deeper into the stone out of sheer panic, making the tunnel wider with every spell.
 

Despite everything she’d said earlier, she dug in a way that blocked the tunnel behind her with loose stone. The darkness around them was so complete that Cazia had to press her hands against her eyes to see spots, and the air was thick with dust. The stones above might collapse on them. The Tilkilit might hear them through the rock and crawl in after them. The eagles might scrape them out. There were Enemies everywhere, and not the sort who would hide a wet mop head in your sheets. These Enemies would kill them all.

Calm. Calm. She cast the Eleventh Gift two more times, first to create a narrow vent for air no wider than her thumb, and another to create a small chamber for them to crouch in. She shoved the loose stone out the vent, knowing it might give away their position but trusting that her diversion was still going.
 

She heard the others coming close and chose a stone the size of her fist to turn into a lightstone.
 

Ivy and Kinz were both grinning at her, their eyes alive with excitement. Cazia realized they were right to be excited, and she barked out a little laugh.
 

They all clasped hands. “Together,” Ivy said. “Together together together together.”
 

Cazia
 
squeezed their hands and felt a sudden flush of goodwill toward them both. She really hoped it would last.

Chapter 9

Tejohn was startled. Kill the man who had tortured him, who had ordered him stripped of his belongings and sentenced him to a year of hard labor for the crime of eating a heel of bread? Kill the man whose orders ensured the fall of Ussmajil and the deaths of Tejohn’s own people?

“I won’t do it,” he said.
 

Beacon Veliender did not blink. “You’ve killed men before.”
 

Tejohn realized the old fellow at the next table was staring at him even more intently. “I’ve killed men and women in battle. Some were so young, they were practically children. Some were so inept with their weapons, they might as well have been unarmed. But I’ve never been an assassin.”

“That’s not the only reason.”

“No. Is this what it’s like to have strong vision? To see every detail of a person’s face and read their intent?”
 

She smiled and picked one last apricot from her bowl. “Am I so easy to read?” she asked before eating.

“Not at all,” Tejohn said. “You’re very controlled at the moment, and even if you weren’t, I would have a hard time. It’s not as though I’ve had a lifetime of practice. Still, no, it’s not just that I would become an assassin. A few short months ago, the very idea would have driven me into a fury, but since then the world has been destroyed. I’ve been everything from a”--
regent of a ruined empire
—“king’s shield bearer to the lowliest of servants to a prisoner in a dungeon. Someday, I’d like to return to my family to be a husband and father again. But...”
 

Everything he wanted to say sounded ridiculous, but he soldiered on. “Everyone I’ve ever killed has been someone’s child, but Shunzik Finstel is the child of my tyr. My old tyr, when this city was still called Splashtown and I was a young man still raw with my grief. Samper.”
 

“You fought for Tyr Samper Finstel.”
 

“No. I fought for my own reasons, but he was our leader. Our tyr. He was a hard but honorable man and he deserved respect. My father thought so, anyway. He lost as much of his family in those battles as any of us, but when I asked him to let me follow the Italgas back to Peradain, to get away from the memories here, he was kind enough to let me go.”

“And how you have returned. With Shunzik Finstel out of the way, there would be one true tyr left inside the city.” Tejohn gasped in surprise. This was not what he’d expected to hear. “Someone who had been born here and had led our people to victory a generation ago when hope seemed so thin. Someone with experience against this new enemy. Someone who could make
proper
preparations for the upcoming fight.”

Tejohn felt dizzy for a moment. Could the temple truly make him tyr over Splashtown and all her lands and people? Make him king?
 

The very idea made him want to walk away. It was impossible. Ludicrous. Someday, someone might write a song about him, but it would not be a tale about building a tower.
 

“A king with no spears but the one in his hand is not a king at all,” he said. “But even if you could make me believe the soldiers of Ussmajil would rise up to support me, I won’t kill the old tyr’s son. I just won’t do it. When I needed to get away, he let me go.”
I have more important things to do.
 

“I was afraid of you,” the old man said. He pushed back from the table and shuffled over to sit beside Veliender. “You were so angry and so popular with the soldiers. More than you knew. You still are, I think.”
 

Tejohn stared, astonished. Could this tall, lean man with the sullen brow and the clean-shaven jaw really be him? Tejohn put his hands on the table to push his chair back to stand, but the old man... Samper Finstel waved at him to be still.
 

“Don’t stand up. I’m not a tyr any longer, just an old priest without even any duties. Sweeping. They let me sweep. Don’t be surprised, my boy--Song knows, I shouldn’t call you that--it’s long been the tradition of my family for leaders to retire into religious service when they became too old to fight alongside warriors in battle. It goes back to the days before the empire, but it’s not public knowledge anymore.” Samper managed to lower himself into the chair, but it was obviously painful for him.
 

Tejohn lowered his voice. “Was this a test?”

“No.”
 

“Do you
want
me to kill your son?”

“Yes,” the old man answered. “But no. No, no, a thousand times no.”
 

Tejohn turned his attention back to Veliender. Common sense suggested that seeing the king’s father here would confirm that his escape from the dungeon and time on the sleepstone had been a trick, but he didn’t believe it. Now more than ever, he knew he was free.

“I have another duty,” he explained. “Even if I were willing to turn my steel against the Finstel family, I can not spare the time. The king--Lar Italga--gave me a task before we separated, and I intend to complete it.”

Veliender waved her hand as though her previous offer was a wisp of smoke she could dissipate. “You still plan to go to Tempest Pass for that spell, even without your scholar-king.”
 

“I am. Still.” Tejohn turned his attention to his old tyr. “I’m sorry, Beacon, but this mission might save everyone, not just the people of Ussmajil.”
 

“We will help you,” Veliender said. “And provide you with a companion who has had scholar’s training. He can learn your spell.”
 

Tejohn nodded gratefully to her. “Thank you.”

Samper’s gaze was unyielding. “Return quickly. Your people need you.”

The old man shifted in his seat to look out to the eastern sky. Tejohn had the feeling he had been dismissed, but he did not stand and back out of the room, not when the sun was still rising, showing him not only the city below, but the Southern Barrier and Great Falls as well.

Not that anyone would be using those Peradaini names anymore. Tejohn would have to learn the old ones again. Someday. For the moment, he sat on the terrace and watched the day begin. It was glorious.
 

The priests eventually got up and began their day, but Tejohn stayed. Movement, detail, spectacle: the strained expression of an old man lifting his barrow. The cracks in the black mud smeared between roof tiles. An orange-striped cat sauntering over a sill into someone’s apartment.
 
The world was finally revealing itself to him, and it was overwhelming. How could people live their whole lives with such extraordinary detail and think it mundane? Someday, it would be the same for him, he knew, assuming he lived long enough to get accustomed to his new vision.