The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (45 page)

Fire take the man, had he put every kinzchu spear on there? They’d be lost at the bottom of the river if she didn’t do something about it.
 

Cazia went to the door and threw it open, eliciting a yelp of fear from the Queen Counsel and the servant alike. As she’d expected, there were no grunts on the other side; they’d fled when they saw The Blessing undone.
 

At the foot of the tower, she saw a small pile of naked bodies. Were they dead? Had she cured them of The Blessing only to kill them?
I’m sorry.
 

Cazia backed up, took two steps and leaped out onto the bridge. She landed on the center stone with her left foot and immediately took another long, jumping stride into the next tower. She cleared the two kinzchu stones with more ease than she’d expected. She’d come a long way from the girl who had puffed her way up the stairs of the Scholars’ Tower.
 

The servant and the old woman followed her across, although they didn’t bother hopping. Cazia glanced around the room. There were a few streaks of blood on the walls, but it didn’t look as though a massacre had taken place. Eshla glanced at the mess and looked away, disinterested. The servant seemed terrified.
 

As she should be. Cazia rushed to the top of the tower stairs and peered down. There was no movement and no sound. Perfect.
 

Eshla stopped her with a question. “How are we supposed to get those spears in a village that’s been overrun? You have your spells, but what do we have?”

She was right. Of course she was right. Cazia could crumble one of the granite blocks around her and make them into kinzchu stones. How many would each of them need? Four? Ten?
 

Too long. Making ten kinzchu stones would take too long. If only there was a faster—

“I have an idea,” she said, then moved to the wall.
 

The floor was made of thick wooden planks of some pale wood, but the support would be strongest at the edges. She cast the Sixth Gift, creating a flattish stone in front of her. Then she knelt, clearing her mind to recall the gray void to it.
 

This time, Cazia had to shut her eyes to keep her focus, because the stairs were right behind her and what if a grunt came up behind her? She focused her attention on the movement of her arms and the slight changes in finger position that the spell required. Her wizard’s awareness of the shape and power of magic extended to the First Plunder, it seemed.
 

Finished. The entire block was now infused with anti-magic. Next came the risky part; she began casting the Eleventh Gift. She’d never tried casting on a kinzchu stone before. Maybe the spell would dissipate. Maybe the stone would vibrate and burst the way they did when they touched the Evening People. And just maybe she would get lucky.
 

The stone block cracked and came apart in little squarish pieces no larger than an apricot.
 
Cazia moved her hand close to one; she could feel the anti-magic still in it. She checked another, then another. Every piece of broken rubble had become a kinzchu stone.
 

Great Way, why hadn’t she thought of this days ago?

She stood and backed away, wiping her hand on her skirts. There was no magic-destroying dust on them, but she wanted to clean them off anyway. “These are just like the bridge now. Take as many as you like. They should clean The Blessing out of anyone they touch. Just don’t let them touch me. Make sure she knows that.”
 

The old woman muttered something to the girl, and they both gathered up their skirts in their left hands and loaded stones in them like apples. Cazia waited impatiently for them; they insisted on taking far more than she’d expected.
 

The girl went down the stairs first, a rock in her hand and her arm held back ready to throw. Eshla held two stones and followed close behind, with Cazia taking up the rear. It wasn’t right to make the little servant girl go first, but what choice was there? The Queen Counsel was the oldest person Cazia had ever seen, and Cazia couldn’t touch their only weapon. It had to be the girl. It had to.
 

Sweat poured down Cazia’s back. The screams from the village had not abated; if anything, they’d gotten worse. The roars of the grunts were louder and closer, and there was something triumphant in them. Was she leading the army that would liberate Tyr Freewell’s people? A reformed wizard, a servant child, and an arrogant former queen?
 

The stairs curved as they descended, so Cazia could not see where the servant girl threw her stone. All she could see was a blue-furred grunt bounding onto the stairs below them.
 

The girl screamed and cringed, but Eshla threw her stone straight on, striking the grunt on the shoulder. It staggered, then fell, sliding off the stairs to the floor below. As Cazia had feared, the kinzchu stones were weaker, but thankfully, it wasn’t by much.
 

The old woman was already fumbling for another stone, but there appeared to be nothing for her to throw it at. “Move, move,” Cazia urged them, and the girl scrambled down the stairs.
 

In the next room, there were three men—all servants—sitting on the floor in the now-familiar pose of cursed humans awaiting transformation. The servant girl seemed to know just what to do; she picked up the stone Eshla threw, then touched each one on the shoulder.
 

It was like waking them from a trance. One immediately leaped to his feet and, after a short exchange in Surgish, began snatching the stones out of her apron.
 

“Hey!” Cazia shouted, startling everyone, including herself. She suddenly recognized him as the man who had led her to her mother. Good. That meant he’d understand Peradaini. “Those are hers. If you want stones to use against the grunts, there are plenty lying on the top floor. Fetch your own.”
 

He stared at her a moment, as though stunned to be told he couldn’t just take what he wanted from the girl. Then he seemed to come to his senses. He pulled his empty hand away and bowed to Cazia. “My apologies. My enthusiasms overwhelmed me.” He spoke to the other two men with him in his sharp, hissing language and they raced up the stairs. The steward himself bustled to a corner and picked something up. Then he turned and offered it to Cazia.
 

It was her mace. “I was bringing your weapons to you, but I was too slow.” He glanced at the sizeable dent on one side. “My apologies again. I tried to use it against our enemies, but…”

But he couldn’t make it work. Cazia accepted it from him and pressed the lever. The dented cap swung open, then fell to the stone floor with a metallic clatter. The kinzchu stone inside was still firmly seated. The steward actually blushed.
 

The other two servants raced down the stairs with stones bundled into their shirts. The steward took a fistful for himself and the three of them raced down to the ground floor.
 

The servant glanced at Cazia nervously, then hurried after. Eshla looked weary. Cazia took her arm and went down the steps with her. “I’ve waited a long time to get out of that Fire-taken room,” the old woman said, “but I was hoping for a little more grandeur and some beautiful clothes.”
 

There were screams from below. The servant scrambled backwards up the stairs, her arm pumping as she threw stones down the stair well. Suddenly, a blue-furred claw came from the edge of the stair and clamped down on the girl’s ankle. Cazia acted before she even had a chance to think about it; she lunged down and jabbed her mace onto the creature’s wrist.
 

The claw fell away without dragging the girl with it. The servant tried to retreat up the stairs, but Cazia and Eshla were in her way. Cazia turned sideways and let her slip by along the wall.
 

The ground floor was a nest of little fires, which the dozen hostages avoided by crowding toward the middle of the room. The two stewards who had run down the stairs were sprawled on the floor; one had been bitten through the skull, and the other was trembling and gasping for air. It took a moment for her to see that his arm had been torn off. The steward lay on the stairs itself, his leg twisted in an unlikely position.
 

“I’ll take care of them,” Eshla said. She descended the stairs with a kinzchu stone in her hand.
 

Cazia hurried to the steward. “Can we get him upstairs to the sleepstone?”
 

“There are no working sleepstones in the Freewell holdfast,” he said with a grimace. “My son refused to send medical scholars to recharge them.”
 

Fire and Fury, they were going to have to
bind
their wounds like the Indregai. Cazia touched her bloody face. Scars it was.
 

“Put out those fires,” Eshla commanded, moving from person to person and touching them with her stone. Most of the hostages were soldiers, although the man and woman in long robes had the look of merchants. The transformed grunts, now naked and covered in ash, rose choking from the floor. “And put away your iron weapons. These stones will—”
 

A flash of purple burst through the open doorway, slamming into Eshla from behind and driving her to the floor. It was a purple grunt, huge in the low room, and it had crushed the Queen Counsel’s rib cage, killing her instantly.
 

People screamed. Cazia realized she had dropped her mace and, Fire take her, could not see where it went. The grunt roared and the steward seemed to come to life. He hurled a stone at the beast, striking it on its broad back.
 

The grunt arched and screamed in pain but didn’t collapse. It staggered, stepping onto the stones that Eshla dropped at the same time the servant hit it with a throw of her own.
 

The beast collapsed and began to tremble.
 

“Outside!” Cazia shouted. “Get that thing outside!” Fire and Fury, the grunt was huge, but there were more than a dozen men and women here. They had the strength to do it.
 

But they were too disorganized, and worse, no one was translating for her. She grabbed the steward’s arm and tried to lift him up, spilling stones from his lap. “Everyone out!” she cried. “Tell them to get away from it!”

The steward overbalanced and fell off the edge of the stone stairs with a cry of pain. He shouted something in Surgish that sounded urgent enough. Everyone froze and looked at them both.
 

The grunt tore at its own flesh and
shrieked
. One of the soldiers rushed for the door, and it was like a dam breaking. As soon as that soldier ran, everyone did. Cazia moved toward the steward but he waved her away frantically. The grunt had begun to glow. There was no time to save him, and he knew it.
 

The little girl grabbed Cazia’s arm and pulled her to the floor above. Cazia could have resisted, but she didn’t. They ran together.

A brilliant flash of orange-white light filled the stairwell, and Cazia pushed the girl into the room on the second floor room, then lunged after her, rolling across the planks as fire rolled up the stairwell ceiling. Tongues of flame shot through the floorboards, too, and Cazia immediately began the Fifth Gift. A wave of hot, suffocating air passed over her, and the screams from below were like no screams Cazia had ever heard in her life.
 

Too many did not get out.
The servant wailed as the fire caught on her robe, and then Cazia had finished her spell. Water poured from the space between her hands like a torrent, dousing the girl’s tunic. Then she turned the jet onto the floor, flooding it. The water blasted from nothingness, surging across the floor, shattering furniture against the far wall and pouring through the slats.
 

Steam billowed from the floor below, choking and scalding them both. Cazia’s first instinct was to retreat further up the tower, but she stood her ground, washing over the boards one moment, then funneling a deluge down the stairwell the next. Thick smoke and billows of steam surrounded her, then faded. Her torrent of water kept on.

I am a wizard.
Cazia’s magic had a potency that would have terrified the old busybodies in the Scholars’ Tower, but she did not have to fear them any longer. A fierce smile pulled at the cut on her chin and lip, making her bleed again, and that was fine.
 

They were going to win this fight.
She
was going to win this.
 

Cazia let the spell die away. The servant scrambled off the wet floor and knelt at her feet. The girl’s eyes were wide with terror. That would not do. Cazia motioned her to stand.
 

She did. Great Way, she really was just a child. “Cazia,” she said, pointing toward herself.

“Issilas,” the girl answered with a curtsy.
 

Cazia took hold of the girl’s empty hands and squeezed them. “Cazia, Issilas, rawr!” she said, and the girl actually smiled. Cazia released her and pointed at the kinzchu stones on the floor. Issilas began collecting them immediately.
 

Cazia went far enough down the stairs to look into the room. It was as she’d feared. Not everyone had escaped from the room before the grunt had burst into flame. The steward with the twisted leg lay were he had fallen, his fist raised before his body as though he was about to fight. His two compatriots also lay burned beyond recognition, and there were six or seven other bodies, too. All had been roasted alive. The smell of their burned flesh and the ankle-deep water--like a huge kettle of soup--made Cazia’s stomach turn over.
 

But the others who had escaped were not far from the doors. Cazia waved them in. They entered nervously.
 

The blast of fire and rush of water had spread kinzchu stones all across the floor. The Evening Person sprawled in the center, atop Eshla’s scorched and blackened corpse. The kinzchu stones were supposed to be lethal to his kind, and he had transformed directly on top of a pile of them.