The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (19 page)

“That they should wait for the final hatching before they started to eat us. Apparently, they have been using these last few years of peace to build an army. If The Blessing had not come, they would have attacked sometime next summer. Now we are not sure what they will do. My father and cousin were very upset, but I do not know how we will fight the grunts at the bank of the Straim and the serpents on our northeastern borders. My cousin’s only advantage is that the serpents do not yet know we can understand their language.”

“They chant,” Cazia said, looking a little distracted. “Is that strange? They don’t talk to each other so much as chant the same things over and over, with a call and response. Who would have expected serpents to chant?”
 

For one absurd moment, Tejohn imagined the Evening People listening to the serpents, judging their hissing chants like a performance at a Festival. “Two translation stones, then?”

The Freewell girl got an impish grin. “No. The second stone is something else. It takes away a person’s magic. Yes, if a scholar touches it, he or she can’t cast a spell for a short time.”

“How short?”

“More than a day for me. The best part is that it is a cure for hollowed-out scholars.”
 

Tejohn’s immediate impulse was to scold her. Instead, he asked, “How did you ever test that?”
 

The Freewell girl glanced at his hip, and he realized he had unconsciously laid his hand on his knife. He moved it immediately. She did not answer right away.

Chapter 11

They approached the tower at something like a crawl. Perhaps it felt slower than it was, but for most of the day, Tejohn was sure they were barely matching the pace of a double-time march.
 

He did see that the paths he had been following came to an abrupt end well before they reached the Tempest Pass. There was a series of cliffs and rockfalls that utterly blocked the way; to finish the journey without a cart, he would have needed a boat to navigate the northernmost part of Lake Windmark or he would have had to clamber over treacherous terrain.
 

The tower itself stood out against the rock behind it because it was made of the same pink stone that marked every Peradaini fortification. It turned out to be a little smaller and a little closer than Tejohn had expected; it was no more than five stories high, if you included the peaked roof.
 

The rock face behind it looked to be normal stone. Arla had told him, back during their journey through the Sweeps, that the Northern Barrier had been fused into an unscalable wall as smooth as a sheet of beaten copper. Tejohn had to admit he wanted to see that, but apparently, it didn’t extend this far west.
 

On the northeastern slopes behind the tower, someone had cut terraces into the rock. There were many small patches of farm- and pastureland for some distance along the Northern Barrier. As they came closer, Tejohn realized there was another low cliff separating the terraced farmland from the tower grounds themselves.
 

The Freewell girl approached carefully. The winds--along with the sour smell--had become intense, and they had to shout to be heard. The cart itself trembled a little, as though the buffeting winds might shake it apart. Tejohn leaned over the side and was dismayed to see that it had been put together with bronze nails instead of a good, old-fashioned tongue-and-groove system with rope lashing.
 

The princess pointed toward the terraces. Someone was waving a red cloth in the air, obviously to get their attention. The sun was slowly dipping below the peaks to the west and Tejohn wanted them to hurry up, hurry up.
 

The Freewell girl turned the cart away from the tower and started toward the waving cloth. When they came close enough, they were directed to a terrace without crops. It made sense to set down on a fallow field, but Tejohn didn’t like the idea that the cart would be mired in the mud.

“You’re late!” a woman shouted as she sprang up a roughly-carved set of stairs. “We were expecting you before midsummer! And...” She looked over the four of them as they came over the rail. “You’re not the usual crew.”
 

The Freewell girl led the group through the muddy field. “We’re the unusual crew. Can you take us to a place we can rest? We’re exhausted and we’re in need of a sleepstone.”
 

“No sleepstone here,” the woman said. She had a deeply lined face and steel-gray hair, but her muscles were as thick and lean as any young spear. “We don’t have the people and we don’t have anyone to refresh the spells, not since the prince went hollow. No feast here, either. Everything was prepared for midsummer but no one arrived.” She started down the stairs, expecting the others to follow. They did.
 

“Who’s in charge here?” Tejohn asked.
 

“I’m chief servant,” the woman said. “Esselba Pick.” Others began to congregate at the edges of the terrace, hoes, pitchforks, and other tools resting on their shoulders.
 

“I’m Tyr Tejohn Treygar,” he responded. He’d just told the Freewell girl and her companions that there was no more empire, but if his old title made things a little easier, he would make use of it. “What news have you had of the outside world?”
 

“Little. We haven’t even had a Durdric trader through here in a month.”
 

“Let’s gather your people,” Tejohn said. “We have much to discuss.”
 

As he suspected, everyone in the little village was officially a servant of the Italga family, pledged to care for Ghoron in his tower. Since the prince had gone mad six years before, their only responsibility was to lower a basket of food onto the tower grounds twice a day, no matter the weather. That was it. The rest of the time, they lived like free people, and like free people in small communities everywhere, they were simultaneously curious and suspicious of outsiders.
 

Their homes had been carved out of the mountainside. Tejohn was initially surprised that they lived in little caves, but he shouldn’t have been. They needed every bit of flat ground to grow food, and there was no other way to get out of the incessant wind.
 

While a meal was being laid out, the Freewell girl pulled Tejohn aside to ask if they dared tell the whole truth. She had a point; there was every chance that the lot of them, upon hearing that the empire was no more, would simply pack up whatever they could carry and walk away. There were unclaimed lands on the other side of the Northern Barrier, he’d been told, although they were rumored to be barren and icy most of the year, and all these people would have to do was walk through Tempest Pass toward them.

Alternately, they might free themselves with the points of their knives. He promised to consider it carefully.
 

At least thirty people, adult and child, sat down to supper. They had rice and grapes along with roasted alligaunt tail. Tejohn hesitated to take a skewer of the meat, thinking back to those piles of stones and the strange grasping motions they’d made toward him, but he noticed a few of the villagers watching him from the corner of their eyes, so he took one. Fire and Fury, it was delicious.
 

“So,” Esselba said once the food was served. No one stopped eating, but they all looked to Tejohn. “You say there’s news?”
 

“A lot of news,” Tejohn said, “and it’s complicated. Before I start in with it, let me ask a pair of questions. Are all of you servants to the same master? Who is that master?”
 

Everyone began eating more slowly. A terrible tension built in the room. “We are,” Esselba answered, “and we are all bound to Ellifer Italga and the Italga family, most of us for three generations.”
 

Tejohn nodded and set down the rice ball they had offered him. “In that case, I have three things to tell you. Consider this the first items of news we will report.” He held up three fingers, then lowered one. “First, Ellifer Italga is dead and his family has no living heirs.” There was a commotion from the group, but Tejohn lowered another finger and kept talking over them. “Second, as a tyr of the empire, I transfer your service to me. Last, in gratitude of this fine meal you have placed before us, I release you from your service. As of this moment, you are all free people.”
 

The group stared at him in stunned silence. Finally, Esselba spoke. “What if we don’t want to be free people?”
 

“What do you mean?” the herder girl blurted out. “How can you make to reject freedom?”
 

“Because we are protected here.” Esselba’s tone was plain but placid, as if she were explaining the basics of planting a seed to a child. “We grow our own food and take our own meat. We mine a little copper. We trade with a few broad-minded Durdric travelers. We have no worries that some square of spears from a minor tyr will march upon our lands and put us all to the blade. We are safe.”
 

“There’s no one left to protect you,” the Freewell girl said. “I lived in the palace before it fell. I was there, at the Festival when everything went wrong. I’m telling you, the Italgas are no more.”
 

They spent most of the night talking over the events of the spring and summer. No one believed them at first, to Tejohn’s tremendous frustration, and there were many incredulous questions. Over time, though, Esselba Pick became convinced, and most of the others followed her lead.
 

“Tomorrow, we will need to speak with Prince Ghoron.”
 

“To what end?” a narrow-shouldered young man said. “The man went hollow years ago. He only grows more sickly.”

“We can restore him,” the Freewell girl said, “with a kinzchu stone.” Kinz, the herder refugee, looked surprised at this. Freewell turned toward her and said, “You’re the reason we escaped with them, aren’t you? And I hate to even think that other name.”
 

While the herder’s cheeks flushed a little, she ate a rice ball. Esselba leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, “Is that the Fourteenth Gift? A spell to cure wizards?”
 

“It’s not one of the Gifts,” Freewell said. “It’s the First Plunder. We stole it from an enemy.”
 

They were offered a cave low on the hill. There were bed frames with thin mats over knotted ropes and a little oil lamp, but only one room. Tejohn didn’t feel comfortable sleeping so near three young girls, but they didn’t seem to care. As they laid out to sleep, Tejohn suddenly realized he’d neglected to share an important piece of news.
 

“Miss Freewell,” he said as she was about to blow out the lamp.
 

“At this point, you should call me Cazia,” she said.
 

He sighed, looking up at the trembling shadows on the cave wall. “Lar told me the same thing, once, but... Cazia, please call me Tejohn. There’s no more need for all this ‘my tyr’ business. From any of you.”
 

“Thank you,” she said. Great Way, but she sounded as serene and self-contained as Laoni. “What did you want to tell me?”

“It’s about Doctor Twofin. I don’t know how to say this gently, but he was taken captive by the Finstels and forced to... He has gone hollow.”
 

“We can fix that,” the girl said. Her expression was utterly still.
 

“So I gather. However, in the meantime, you should understand that he’s
done
things. Things out of children’s horror stories. Even if you can undo the madness on him, you can’t undo his crimes.”
 

“We’ll see” was all she said. She blew out the flame and the cave plunged into darkness. He listened carefully for any sound that she might make—he knew she had loved the old scholar—but if she shed any tears, she was quiet about it. Tejohn fell asleep to the sound of the wind whistling across the entrance to their shelter.
 

At morning meal, the people needed to be convinced all over again, so Tejohn told the story once more, answering every question as best he could. It was exhausting and infuriating, but he needed their help, so it had to be done.
 

After that, they discussed the way to cure Prince Ghoron with a “kinzchu” stone, as the girls called it. The cliff where they lowered the basket of food to him was at least thirty feet above the tower grounds. It was possible to throw or drop the stone on him, but he could dodge them easily. What’s more, Kinz had a small number of stones in her pouch--Cazia refused to stand within three paces of them when the herder took them out. If they missed, they would have to climb down to the tower grounds to retrieve it.
 

Which Esselba expressly forbid. Ghoron was barely human, she insisted, but he no longer attacked those who stayed atop the cliff. For those caught on the tower grounds, anything might happen. She said that every once in a while, a couple of Durdric boys got it into their heads to show their bravery by touching the pink stone of the tower. Some made it in and out while the prince slept. Some were burned alive. Some were engulfed in green smoke that washed their flesh from their bones as if it was mud washed away by a stream. No one was to go down there. It was forbidden.