The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (18 page)

The last kind had been her favorite. She admitted, with a little flush of her sun-darkened cheeks, that she had sometimes imagined herself in the center of one of those stories.
 

Well, duh,
Cazia wanted to say. Of course she could be in a story about heartbreak. She was the most beautiful girl Cazia had ever seen, no matter how dirty she got.
 

Before she could say anything, Ivy asked, “Were you chased by boys?” with unashamed glee.

At this, Kinz became uncomfortable. “Boys, yes. And men, too. It was not like in the stories. It was not always very nice. The women in our clan made to protect me sometimes. Too many times. Of course, all of those people are dead now.”
 

Kinz glanced at Cazia as though expecting her to say something hateful or horrible, although of course she would never. But Cazia felt she ought to say something kind or comforting. Her mind was blank.
 

Ivy took hold of the older girl’s hand and held it tightly. “Tell us about them.”
 

She did. She spoke for many long hours, and she shed many tears.
 

Eventually, it was Cazia’s turn. She did not think at all about what she might say, and let the truth spill out. She told them about living as a hostage in the king’s court, about the father she never saw and the friends she was never parted from. She talked about the kindness of the royal family and the petty cruelties from everyone else. She did her best to minimize the frustration and loneliness and talked more than she’d intended about the first Italga queen, the one her father had killed. It was supposed to have been an accident, but no one cared. She’d died before Cazia had been born, obviously, but it seemed that nothing rekindled the palace folk’s love for her more readily than the sight of Cazia there within the walls. Then she changed the subject so she could talk about the food she stole from the kitchens.
 

It seemed that she had gone on longer than the others, until she suddenly ran out of words. She was describing the old scholars who toiled endlessly in the Scholars’ Tower, and then there was nothing else to say. Darkness had fallen outside and her throat was dry. If only she’d had a chance to create some water for them.
 

But her magic was still barely a tingle. There was nothing to do but sleep. The other girls looked at her; she looked back, uncertain what to say.
I murdered my brother.
She wasn’t the only one enduring grief.
 

On the morning Peradain had fallen to the grunts, one of the people she’d fled with--the Scholar Administrator, Doctor Warpoole--had looked back at the city and lamented at the loss of music, theater... Great Way, the
writing
that was lost. Such a rare, precious skill. The tower was full of maps. Had they been lost when the city burned?
 

It made her sad and sick to realize that so much had been wasted. On the same day, everyone that had come to live in the city with Ivy had been lost. The members of her royal family that tutored her and cared for her, plus all their servants and relations.
 

And shortly after, Kinz and her brother had lost everyone they knew, leaving them to wander alone in the Sweeps.
 

All lost. All orphans. They stared at her so strangely, and she knew she was staring back. She’d been so self-righteous with Kinz back in the tower on the beach, and it had felt so good. It had felt like strength.

Cazia felt tears welling up and so she lay down on the stony floor and covered the lightstone with the edge of her skirt. Yes, it would prevent the light from shining out of their ventilation hole, but it would also hide her tears. Scholars should not weep.
 

They woke hungry and parched. Cazia’s magic had mostly returned; she created a depression in an empty part of their chamber and filled it with water. They took turns easing their thirst, lapping at it like cats. She encouraged them to drink as much as they could, because their smoked fish was already half gone.
 

Then the tunneling. The higher they went, the more loose the material they moved through. The tunnel seemed slightly less stable with every few feet.
 
Finally, about midday, the thing Cazia had feared finally happened. As she finished a spell, the mountain around her collapsed suddenly. They fell outward, thankfully, exposing all three girls to a blinding shaft of daylight, but it was the noise that was most alarming. The minor avalanche made the entire tunnel vibrate. She’d come out into a rift in the mountainside.
 

There was an immediate shriek from just out of sight, and Cazia scrambled backward as the shadow of one of the huge birds passed over the end of the tunnel. “Move! Move!” she whispered, driving the other girls deeper into the tunnel with her heels.
 

Something heavy struck the tunnel ahead, collapsing it further. A wedge-shaped rock broke free of the tunnel roof, and Cazia had to curl herself very small to avoid it. She scraped her forehead on the tunnel floor and thanked Fire for passing her by.
 

Crouching in the darkness, Cazia peered over the stone that had nearly crushed her skull at the daylight visible ahead. A plume of dust obscured her view, but she quickly realized she didn’t need to see. The dust swirled as the eagles beat their wings near the opening, screeching and swooping toward the rift.
 

Had they seen her? If they dropped a stone or one of those gigantic tree trunks, the tunnel might collapse, crushing or suffocating all three of them. Gooseflesh prickled on Cazia’s back as she realized the sight of motes churning through the air might be the very last thing she saw in her life.
 

It didn’t happen. The eagles moved away, taking their noise and commotion with them. Something had them agitated, but Cazia couldn’t imagine what it could be… Unless they assumed her tunneling was one of the gigantic Tilkilit worms trying to catch them by surprise.
 

Of course, if she had taken hold of the translation stone in her pocket, she would have known what they were saying, but to do that she would have had to shift the piles of dirt and small stones on her, creating another small dust cloud. She was curious, yes, but not so curious she was willing to risk catching their attention again.
 

It took some time, but the eagles eventually moved far enough away that their cries were barely audible. Cazia counted to a thousand, then shook the dirt and stone from her hair and clothes. They retreated to the little chamber where they’d passed the night, and Ivy took the lightstone from her pocket.
 

“I’m sorry,” Cazia said. She hadn’t planned to apologize, but it came out of her anyway. “I couldn’t feel that rift in the mountain.”

Kinz tried to wipe dirt from her forehead with her dirty hand. Cazia realized she was drenched with fear sweat. “They seemed mildly annoyed.” Her deadpan tone made Cazia and Ivy laugh a little despite themselves.
 

“It might happen again,” Cazia said. “I can’t always tell how much rock there is when I cast a spell. And that collapse might bring more eagles.”

“Or the Tilkilit,” Ivy said.
 

None of them liked the thought of that, but if their enemies met, they might occupy each other long enough for Cazia to...what? What could she do against three giant eagles or a full squad of warriors? Even now that she had become a wizard--the first sane wizard in history, as far as she knew--she didn’t have enough control of her magic to defeat that many enemies at once.
 

“Can we double back?” Ivy asked. “Can we head westward up the cliff face, away from the rift?”
 

They had to. Cazia led them back up the tunnel, and, near the top, she cast her spell directly to the south. They couldn’t do a switchback like a mountain trail, because the tunnel floor might collapse, but she could cut deeper into the rock and slowly angle back toward the cliff face and the fresh air it allowed them.
 

Cazia had learned the spell miners use to break rocks, but she had not learned the skills they needed to break rocks safely.
 

She led them in a curving section of tunnel, making it very steep, until she came once again to the cliff face. The air shaft she dug and the daylight it showed her were more than welcome, but the sound of beating wings that came directly after made her blood run cold.
 

She began to make the air vents on an upward angle, and that pleased them all. Cool, fresh air flowed down the hole toward them, and the girls paused at each new one to take a break from the dust-choked air.
 

One good thing about digging the tunnel so steep was that gravity helped tumble the broken rock from the path ahead. The down side was that Cazia had pebbles and grit in her hair and down her neck. Ivy was right. Tunneling up the mountainside was awful.
 

Finally, in the late afternoon she reached the peak.
 

“It can not be,” Kinz said from behind her. “We could not have made to reached the top so soon.”
 

“But it is,” Cazia insisted. “I can feel the edge of the stone above us, and on all sides, too.”

They glanced back down the steep slope, lit only by the dim daylight entering through the air holes. Could they have reached the top after only two slow days of digging?

“Maybe the ground is higher on this side of the mountains,” Ivy said. “The peaks are the same, obviously, but--”

“The ground
is
higher,” Kinz said. “And the peaks are a little lower in the east as we make near the sea--”

Cazia felt a sudden clutch of fear when she realized she had been moving eastward. What if she caused an avalanche that swept them all into the ocean?

“But still, I do not think we are there. Not yet.”
 

“I would be surprised, too,” Ivy said. “But why not break open the southern face so we can see?”

Cazia took a deep breath and began the spell, taking care to break only a small portion of the stone. It fell away, revealing a little space of air, and then another sheer stone cliff.
 

Of course. She had led them up one of the false peaks that stood beside the cliff. “Monument sustain me.” She cleared a slightly larger gap so she could get a better view, and leaned forward. The gap was only about six feet across, but it was about thirty five feet straight down to where the two stone walls met.
 

The cliff face opposite her rose straight up. That couldn’t be the top of the Northern Barrier, could it? To the east, partly hidden by fog, was another peak, even steeper and higher than the one she’d climbed. To the west was a jutting rock that blocked her view of everything beyond.
 

Kinz and Ivy squeezed into the space beside her. “We will have to backtrack,” Ivy said, sighing.
 

“Song knows I’m in not mood to cover the same ground yet again. I have a better idea.” Cazia cast the Eleventh Gift twice more, first widening the space where they were all crowded together, then to open a space in the stone opposite. She didn’t like the noise and dust the falling stone made, but there was no other choice.
 

After that, she was quiet a moment, considering the changes she would have to make to the Sixth Gift to make it do what she wanted. Yes, that should work. She cast it.
 

A broad flat pink stone appeared, bridging the gap. Cazia leaned out and put her weight on it. It wobbled a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. Not too bad at all. She started across.
 

“I should go first,” Ivy said. “I’m lightest, and... Without you, none of us can get away.”

A bank of fog blew through the gap, and Cazia was almost glad to see it. More stones fell from somewhere; she could hear the sound of them striking bottom echoing in the cleft.
 

“I have to cross to continue the tunnel. I’ll be fine, if you’ll watch the sky for me.”

Cazia started across, a little unnerved to hear stones still bouncing down the mountainside. The fog would hide her from the eagles above, she was sure, but she could tell those sounds were coming from too far away to be caused by her tunnels. Were the eagles perched just above, ready to swoop down on her as soon as the thin fog cleared?

More noises from falling stones, but this time, they made Cazia’s hair stand on end. Before she even realized she was in trouble, she slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the translation stones.
 

“Advance!” she heard, in that distinctive high Tilkilit voice. “Hunt! Capture! Ward!”

She glanced westward toward the top of the overhanging rock. Perched high above, barely visible in the blowing fog, was a Tilkilit warrior. It pointed its spear at her.

Chapter 12

Instinctively, Cazia began the Tenth Gift, but of course she had no iron darts, not anymore. She broke that spell and began the Eleventh as soon as she realized her mistake.