The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (13 page)

Tejohn circled around and pulled out the sword. The killing wound to its throat was slowly knitting shut. He then plunged it in again, this time angling upward into the brain. When he pulled the weapon out this time, the wounds did not close at all. It was dead this time. Fully dead.

Great Way, how could something be so beautiful and so ugly at once? Fury, thank you for giving me the strength to kill this enemy. Please don’t ask me to do it again.

Some time later--an hour? A moment?--Tejohn looked up to see Redegg standing beside him with a look of utter shock on his face. “I should have expected,” Tejohn said in a shaky voice, “that commander Snowfall would not bother to sharpen his sword.”
 

Tejohn plunged the weapon into the grunt’s brain again and left it there. Just to be safe.
 

A sudden roaring sound seemed to come from everywhere at once.
What’s trying to kill me now?
When he looked up, he saw Twofin spears sprinting at him from the far side of the courtyard, and they weren’t even keeping a decent line. Behind them were wild-eyed citizens, cleavers still in hand.
 

Don’t touch me.
He slapped his hand on his empty sheath but it was too late; hands grabbed him from behind and lifted him up. The incredible roaring noise became cheers.

They were cheering for him.
 

The crowd carried him toward the holdfast. Their hands rubbed hard against the many raw lash wounds on his back, and every time they moved him brought a grinding agony in his rib cage. He curled up and tried to roll onto his right side so their hands wouldn’t push against his ribs, but he did not have much control over what they did to him.
 

“Stop!” The voice was deep and loud, cutting through the noise of the crowd. “Stop, good people! Stop!’
 

They did. Tejohn could see that the magistrate blocking the entrance to the holdfast. He had a surprisingly deep voice for someone so small and slender. Tejohn wanted to pass out, but he couldn’t control that, either.
 

When the crowd had grown quiet, the magistrate began to speak again. “Good people, you don’t understand! This is the man who murdered Tyr Iskol Twofin!”
 

There was an awful moment of silence, then a second cheer--even louder than before--sounded out. Tejohn was carried into the great hall on a tidal wave of hands. “Gently!” someone shouted, then others took up the call. The people bearing him became more careful. “To the sleepstones!” someone called. “To the chair,” went the counter.
 

Someone finally had the wit to ask him what he wanted. Tejohn told them to put him down. The pain in his ribs on his right side had become bright and nearly unbearable, and he could feel the blood from his whipping soaking the clothes over his backside. What he wanted was a sleepstone, but others might have needed it more.
 

After they had lowered him--as gently as they could manage, which wasn’t gently enough--into the Twofin chair, he did his best to control his breathing. The crowd of people withdrew several steps. “Redegg, Lowtower, and Bluepetal,” Tejohn said, his voice sounding awfully shaky. “Bring them here.”
 

Two young civilians ran out into the crowd as if excited to be taking his orders. Tejohn glanced at the faces arrayed before him and saw the magistrate standing there, his face pinched.
 

“Why?”
 

The man knew what he was asking. Before he answered, he turned his face away. “Because it was a fair verdict.”
 

One of the soldiers stepped forward and knelt before the chair. “My tyr, we have no medical scholars of our own, but we do have sleepstones available.”
 

“The soldiers outside,” Tejohn said weakly, “the ones who’ve been bitten. You can’t put them onto the sleepstones.”
 

The crowd moved back and then forward. He could see the happiness going out of their expressions. “Why not?” the soldier said. It was practically a challenge, and Tejohn knew he wouldn’t have dared ask a question of the last man to sit on this chair.
 

“Because the grunt’s bite passes on its curse, and a sleepstone will speed the change.”
 

The crowd began to talk among themselves. They sounded like a flock of geese. “Change? What change?” “What curse?”
 

“It’s true!” a voice called from the back of the room. The crowd stilled and turned toward the woman speaking. It was Granny Nin. Tejohn couldn’t believe it. Why was she supporting him? “It’s been happening all over the lowlands, from the coasts to the Finstel lands. The creatures have been making more of themselves, and they do it by biting. That thing out there was once a human being, just like one of you.”
 

That wasn’t true, but Tejohn didn’t think there was any need to argue the matter. The truth would be too complicated to explain
 
“That’s why the creature had to be stopped before it could reach the buildings. The people.” His head was swimming. “Those bitten soldiers need to be cared for, but the magic in the sleepstone will only feed their curse and make them transform all the sooner. Any that are injured but not bitten can be healed.”
 

“There are none,” a soldier said. “They’re all dead.”
 

“All?” Tejohn thought he sounded old as he said it. “None who were not bitten survived?”
 

The young man shook his head. “And the ones who were bitten are in terrible pain, my tyr. The pain they’re suffering…”
 

“If you must see it for yourselves,” Tejohn told him, “bring one to the sleepstones. Just one. Keep a guard on him of six men, with axes. When he begins to change, they have to strike through the skull. Do you hear? As soon as he starts to change.”

“We understand,” the soldier said. He stood and pushed through the crowd toward the doors.
 

“I understand, too,” Tejohn muttered.
 

Suddenly, Redegg was standing beside him, with Bluepetal at his shoulder. “My tyr, you called for us? We are, of course, at your service.”
 

“The people put me on this chair,” Tejohn said, “but I can’t stay.”
 

“Tyr Twofin had a private sleepstone. Perhaps--”
 

“Take me,” he said, hoarsely. “Where is Lowtower?”
 

“Here, my tyr,” the commander said, pushing through the crowd.
 

“Good.” Tejohn stood unsteadily. There were traditions in the lands of Kal-Maddum, but for the moment, Tejohn was too dizzy, too wracked with pain to care about them. Why should there be one man to rule over all? He spoke to the crowd with all the strength and command he could muster. “These three men will rule while I heal. They are your council. They will prepare your soldiers for the defense of the walls, provision for a siege, and make sure Doctor Twofin is caught and tried for his crimes. They will also see to it that Iskol Twofin’s heirs are kept safe. As for me, I still await my sentence. Magistrate?”
 

The small man was still standing by the wall. The crowd drew away from him as though he was contagious. He looked into their faces and remained stoic. “For destruction of public property, the accused is to pay a fine of not less than three silver bolds to the royal chair by sunset three days from now.”
 

“I’ll pay that fine!” a man shouted from the back of the hall. Several other joined the shout to contribute.
 

Tejohn couldn’t help it. He smiled. How strange it felt to receive kindness. “Thank you all,” he said. “But there is still much to do.” He sat again, then turned toward Redegg, Lowtower, and Bluepetal. “We have a few things to discuss before I sleep, but I need to get to that sleepstone.”
 

Lowtower stepped forward as though he was about to take Tejohn’s arm. “Shall I--” Tejohn warded him off with a look. The tyr stood out of the chair and stepped down onto the floor.
 

Redegg seemed to understand and began to lead the little group toward a nondescript door in the northern wall. The crowds parted for them, and Tejohn heard the murmurs behind him as they saw his back. Ridiculous. How many of them had laid their hands on him as they’d carried him out of the courtyard? Hadn’t they seen?
 

The cuts on his back were ugly but shallow. That he knew. If they’d been more severe, he could not have forgotten about them in the excitement of battle. It was the bleeding that was debilitating. “I’ll need something to drink before I sleep. Preferably something without poison in it.”
 

They passed through the door and down a flight of black stone stairs. Here, out of the sight of the crowd, Tejohn accepted Lowtower’s help.
 

“I’ll see to it, my tyr,” Bluepetal said. “What... Er, what is your symbol? We should waste no time in taking down the Twofin banners and--”
 

“Leave the Twofin banners,” Tejohn said. How many times did he have to say it? “I’m not taking over these lands, not even if the people want me to. I still have important work to do. However, if we’re going to win this war against The Blessing, I’m going to need to return to find a stable holdfast and capable soldiers. That means you three have to hold this land together. Everything you do has to be for the greater stability. No reprisals. No looting the treasury. Understand?”
 

“I think the people would be happier if they thought you were going to return to take command.”
 

Bluepetal clearly didn’t like the idea of serving on a ruling council, especially since he seemed to have guessed that Tejohn planned to make it more or less permanent once he set out to complete his quest. As for what the people wanted--
 

Actually, that wasn’t a terrible idea. Isn’t that how the herding clans and some of the Durdric communities did things? The people chose their own leaders. Of course, they were small groups of people, while a tyr--even a tyr of a small land like the Twofins--ruled over thousands of people. Could rule by popular acclaim work at that scale?
 

Tejohn nearly laughed aloud. Not a year ago, he would have thought those ideas were treason.
 

For the moment, it was irrelevant. If they won this war, they could experiment with new ways of picking leaders. Daydreaming about it now was just a waste of time. They turned a corner, moving deeper into the black rock. “About that magistrate…”

Lowtower interrupted, his voice sharp. “The one who ordered my family arrested at the tyr’s urging? The one who refused to hear even a single petition on their behalf? Do not worry, my tyr. His family will be returned to him. Not right away, but within the next few days.”

Tejohn realized that Lowtower might have been arrested before he had a chance to join his family. It wasn’t his place to ask after them. “What are you planning?”
 

Redegg cleared his throat. “I would suggest to my colleagues that we must locate the rogue scholar and repair the gate as our most pressing bits of business. Then we should send out messengers to contact the peoples around us--not just Bendertuks to the south but the cliffside Durdric villages to the west as well. If our neighbors are warned against these creatures, they will better resist them, to our benefit.”
 

Tejohn nodded. “Anyone object to those plans?” Bluepetal and Lowtower didn’t speak up, so he assumed they didn’t. “You need militias. Why are there no women among your bows and spears? I saw guards, but not soldiers.”
 

Bluepetal knocked three times on a heavy oak door, then once more after a slight delay. A bolt slid back and he pulled the door open. Whoever had slid back the bolt was nowhere in sight. Bluepetal spoke quietly as he led them through yet another dark corridor. “Twofins don’t allow women into their armies. That’s been the tradition for generations. Women do not fight in our wars.”
 

“Your
men
can barely fight. But never mind; if the soldiers are too delicate to take a life in front of women, form women-only militias. The men weren’t able to hold back that grunt, and it was only one. They’re going to need additional training and greater numbers. Call for female volunteers. These are their homes and families, too.”
 

“That seems reasonable,” Redegg said mildly.
 

“My tyr,” Lowtower said, his voice tense, “my spears are used to fighting from atop the wall. That has always been the Twofin strength.”
 

“You need new strengths. More strengths. Make sure that happens, or I may wake from this sleepstone in a nest of grunts.”
 

Lowtower bowed stiffly. “I hear and obey, my tyr.”
 

“We’ll also need to collect those whisperers,” Redegg said, clearly glad to be changing the subject. They climbed a short flight of stairs, and Tejohn grew lightheaded at the effort it took. “Their rumors won’t have the same impact as actual deeds performed in full view, but they can be harmful nonetheless. Here it is.”
 

“Bring in Granny Nin as an advisor,” Tejohn gasped. “I’d have put her in charge of your council if she came from Twofin lands, you’ll find her useful nonetheless. She rules her caravan without lash or spear, and you’re going to need her kind of diplomacy and charisma. Besides, it’s not like you can send those caravaners out into the wilderness.”
 

They had come to a heavy, dark wooden door at the end of a corridor. Bluepetal did the same knock, but there was no sound of a bolt being pulled back. Everyone grew tense. Lowtower laid his hand on his sword and pulled on the latch. The door swung outward.
 

The tyr’s room had an open gallery on one side, so the daylight let them see the damage that had been done. Furniture had been smashed, tapestries torn, and clothing strewn around the room.
 

But it was the smell that was most upsetting. The room stank like burned meat, and Tejohn knew immediately what that meant. He glanced about the space, wishing he’s asked for new weapons, but Doctor Twofin was no longer here.