The Way Into Chaos (62 page)

The youngest and quickest of them was sent back to the holdfast with a message. While they waited for their tyr to arrive, the shift stood around anxiously. They assumed that the cloak meant the scholar had been taken away by the road or river, most likely heading south away from the Finstel holdfast, and having an answer they liked, they stopped their search.
 

Tyr Finstel’s cart seemed to take a long time to arrive, but Tejohn knew that was just his impatience. The sun hadn’t even touched the bottom of the mezzanine rail when the cart floated out of the north and settled onto the stone dais.
 

Tejohn kept the scholar well hidden while they listened to Tyr Finstel bark orders and demand explanations from the guards nearby. Only when their voices grew faint did Tejohn dare to glance around the tree trunk.
 

The tyrs and their guards moved out into the meadow away from the tower. They’d left behind two men to watch over the cart, and both stood with their backs to Tejohn.
 

Now. Tejohn slipped out from behind the tree, moving as quietly as he could. He moved close enough to the cart that his cuirass almost bumped against it, then stabbed one of the guards in the back of his neck.
 

The man made a sharp choking sound. Before he could fall, Tejohn had already drawn back his spear and thrust it at the other guard. The second man, who had turned in surprise toward the falling man, took the point full in the throat.
 

Doctor Twofin was right behind him. “I can not fly a cart, my tyr.” 

“It’s not a spell,” Tejohn set down his spear and knitted his fingers, letting the scholar step onto them for a boost. Tejohn lifted him into the cart, and Doctor Twofin immediately took hold of the controls. Tejohn clambered in after him. “The color orange--a bright orange. The feeling of stepping into a deep puddle unexpectedly with your left foot. A square where the right side breaks midline and collapses into an eye solar seas triangle.”
 

Tejohn laid his hand over the scholar’s. The old man’s eyes were closed to help him concentrate, his face still slack. “I assume you meant ‘isosceles,’” Twofin said, but the cart began to shudder.
 

His hand over the scholar’s, Tejohn moved a lever. They floated straight up, quickly. Men shouted and came running, but the cart was out of their reach before they were within ten paces. A pair of spears thudded into the wheels, for all the good it did the throwers. He turned another lever for Doctor Twofin and felt the cart tilt and move off to the south.
 

“I’m getting the feel for this,” Doctor Twofin said.
 

Spears below ran after them, but they were wasting their time. Tejohn wrapped a rope around the old man’s midsection and began to knot it. “We need to turn around before we head for Tempest Pass. Lar Italga gave me a ring—”
 

“No, my tyr. I don’t care to see an Italga on the Throne of Skulls, and I don’t need you any more.”
 

Tejohn had the second part of the harness already half tied, but the sound of the doctor’s voice startled him. He stepped back, his hand falling to his knife out of habit.
 

Tears were streaming down Doctor Twofin’s cheeks.
 

Tejohn had always been quick--quicker than anyone--but the scholar was ready for him. What’s more, all he had to do was flick his wrist.
 

The cart wrenched sideways, angling toward the east. Tejohn fell against the edge of the rail and his body weight hurled him over. His knife clattering against the wooden floor of the cart, Tejohn caught hold of the rail, but his fingers weren’t strong enough to keep hold.
 

A moment later, he was falling through empty air. The cart, framed by that beautiful sky, receded from him. Then something soft and heavy slammed into him.
 

His left leg went wild with pain, and water splashed against his face.
The river bank attacked me
, he thought. Would Laoni have thought that funny? He would never know.
 

The cart disappeared over the treetops. Tejohn was still unable to move when the gleaming iron spear heads came into his view.

Chapter 32

It was night when Cazia awoke. Her hands and back ached, and all she could see above her were pine trees shrouded in moonlit fog. Cazia needed a few moments to remember where she was.
 

Then it came back to her: the Qorr Valley, the Tilkilit, the stone that had struck her leg as she--

“Ivy!” The panic in her voice surprised even her. She struggled to sit upright, doing her best to ignore the pain that shot through her limbs when she moved. “Ivy, where are you?”
 

“Cazia?” It was Ivy’s voice, coming from somewhere to her left. Cazia rolled onto her knees--her hands were tied behind her back; that was why they hurt, her feet, too--but she had to see whether the girl was all right.
 

“Little sister, are you hurt?” Cazia crawled toward the sound of the princess’s voice on her knees, stones and twigs jabbing into her bare knees.
 

“Cazia?” came the voice again. “Are you...yourself again?”
 

The question startled her, but as soon as she heard it, she realized the answer. She
was
herself again. The hollow space inside her--unliving but intelligent--was gone, and so was the feeling that she might start weeping at any moment. Gone, too, was the inexplicable yearning to enter the portal, or to destroy herself by casting spells. The Tilkilit’s stone had ripped the hollow from her and returned her to herself.
 

“I am,” Cazia said, and she started crawling forward again. “Whatever they did to me with that stone—”
 

A Tilkilit warrior came out of the fog and held a spear point at her throat. Two more followed, aiming their weapons at her.
 

Fire take them. Cazia wasn’t going to cower in front of them. “Have they hurt you?”
 

The warriors didn’t plunge their weapons into her. Maybe, like Chik, they didn’t believe that the apes could talk.
 

“No,” came the answer. Cazia sagged onto the forest floor, her relief stealing all her energy. “But they have done something to Kinz. She is in some kind of cocoon—”

One of the warriors came up behind Cazia and pressed a hard, cool object against the back of her neck. A shiver ran through her and she felt something being torn from her the way a bedcover would be torn from a bed. If she hadn’t been lying on the ground, she would have collapsed.
The black stone again.

A Tilkilit set a bowl of water beside her head. Was she supposed to drink like a dog? She was tempted to curse at them, but she didn’t have the strength, and she was
so parched
...

Ten of the little warriors came out of the swirling fog, pulling a sled behind them. It was huge, larger than any cart Cazia had ever seen, and once her water bowl was empty, Cazia was lifted bodily and laid on it beside Vilavivianna.
 

She was also bound with her hands behind her back but she appeared to be unhurt. At least, not hurt any more than when Cazia had last seen her. The scrapes on her head and cheek had scabbed over cleanly. The warriors dragged them across the bumpy ground. “It’s good to see you,” Cazia said.
 

Ivy looked into her face intently, searching for something. “You are really okay,” she said. “You have really returned to yourself.”

“Whatever they did to me, it cured me. But I can’t move my fingers.”

Ivy rolled away from her to display her hands. The strong, thin strands the Tilkilit had bound them with were packed around her hands like glue. They both had been bound, and very effectively, too. “Where’s Kinz?”
 

Ivy nodded to the other side of the sled where Kinz lay completely covered by the same stuff binding Ivy’s hands. Only her sleeping face showed, and if nothing else, Cazia thought her color had improved. Maybe they were healing her?
 

She thought again about the strange dark stones. Cazia wanted one. Fire and Fury, she wanted a thousand. What if every scholar had one? They could use the Gifts at any pace they liked, and when they began to go hollow, one touch of the stone would cure them.
 

Cazia closed her eyes, trying to ignore the bumping of the sled. The Tilkilit really needed someone to teach them about wheels. She thought about a simple spell, something she had cast hundreds of times. Fresh water. The forms came back to her, and so did her new, deeper understanding of them. With a change of a single shape, she could have made it salt water, with a darkening of a color it would have become as cold as a glacier.
 

It was all under her control. Cazia rolled over and stared at Ivy. She wanted to tell her everything, but she knew the princess wouldn’t understand.
 

I have become a wizard without losing my soul.
 

The Tilkilit suddenly dropped the sled onto the uneven ground, and both girls rolled off of it. Warriors picked them up like sacks of grain and carried them up a hill of newly dug earth. Cazia felt a moment of panic as they came over the top and started down into the earth. She glanced back and saw Ivy and Kinz coming just behind. Were they all going to be buried alive?
 

The darkness was complete. Cazia felt herself carried deeper, but by the time it occurred to her to keep track of all the turnings, it was already too late.
 

They needed light. The lightstone spell came to her mind, and she thought about it critically for the first time. If she were going to cast it without using her hands, how would she do it?
 

No. No, it wasn’t possible. Monument sustain her, she knew she could make one with minimal movements, but she needed gestures.
 

Not that it mattered at the moment. Her connection to the magic was gone. The Tilkilit stones had not only taken her hollowed space, they’d taken her magic, too.
 

Temporarily, though. They wouldn’t have used one a second time if the loss of her magic was permanent.
 

After many turns and descents, the warrior set her down on hard-packed earth. It was still utterly dark, but Ivy cried, “Ouch!” when she was dropped beside Cazia, and the echo suggested a cavern.
 

Something moved in the darkness, something heavy and sharp, scraping against stone and shell. Goose bumps ran down Cazia’s back.
What is in here with us?
Had they carried her all this way just to feed her to one of their worms?

Then a voice echoed inside her skull. It was harsh and furious, and it had all the warmth of an avalanche.
 

::Creatures,:: it said. ::You are now my property.::

To be continued in THE WAY INTO MAGIC

Author's note

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