The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (30 page)

A chime began to ring from somewhere nearby. It was dull, flat, and high, coming in double strikes.
Ting-ting! Ting-ting! Ting-ting!
 

Even their alarm bells are primitive.
Cazia shook that off. The whole fort would be on alert in moments, and they were unarmed. Ivy had insisted that they not take the guards’ weapons or seriously hurt anyone; she thought it would only escalate things.
 

Cazia clutched at the coil of rope, ignoring the pain in her hand. Every moment made her heart beat harder, which made her hand throb even worse. She couldn’t stop. They had no time to rest, and if she fell behind, they wouldn’t have the rope they needed to climb down the southern wall.
 

How Cazia was supposed to climb down a rope one-handed was another issue entirely. The other girls didn’t seem to have noticed that it would be impossible for her.
 

So she ran behind them, determined to keep up but knowing that if they were successful, she might never see either of them again.
 

An old man wearing a blanket just like theirs appeared on the landing with a torch in his hand. His cloth was cinched with a rope belt but the girls’ were not; Cazia was suddenly certain that he would call an alarm.
 

Ivy spoke to him in a high, panicky voice, pointing back behind them. The old man waved the three of them by him and raised his light, peering down the stairs into the darkness.

At the end of the next flight, they came to a dim, curving corridor. There were no more stairs upward, so Ivy waved them to the right and ran with her.
Ting-ting! Ting-ting! Ting-ting!
“We have to keep heading south until we find stairs that lead up the wall.”

Ahead, a man leaned out of a doorway, a candle in his hand. Ivy kept running toward him, and Cazia could see that he was not dressed in the same blanket with the hole to poke your head through. He wore a traveling tunic that came down to his knees, soldier’s boots, and a coil of greenery woven through his blond hair. He was no servant; he was dressed for the road.
 

Ivy didn’t break her pace as she approached him, but one look at his expression made Cazia’s guts go sour with fear.
He is not fooled.

The man stepped out of the doorway all the way, blocking the corridor. He had a gleaming bronze stabbing sword in his other hand.

Ivy pulled up short; Kinz and Cazia both rushed to stand in front of her. They showed him their empty hands.
 

The man’s head quirked to one side and he said, unmistakably, “Vilavivianna?”

With great surprise, the princess said, “Goherzma?”

Cazia heard heavy footsteps coming from behind them. Hurry!
 

The swordsman tried to stammer out a question, but Ivy cut him short with a quick entreaty. He immediately bowed, stepped back, and allowed them to rush into the room. He shut the door behind them.
 

They were safe. Or they had been trapped.

Chapter 20

Did it matter that he hadn’t known? Did it matter that she was so much older than his own children, both the one who had died so many years ago and the three who were supposed to be hiding safely in the distant East?
 

No. No, none of that mattered. One of the grunts he had trapped and burned had been a little girl. He had murdered a child.
 

Tejohn felt a wave of dizziness overtake him; the world seemed to have turned into an empty white void. He had killed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, but they had always been adults—or at least old enough to take up arms. But a little one? The image of his own child rushed back to him, lying in the mud beside his back door, all split open and spilled out like a butchered animal.
 

“My tyr?” Javien said. “Tyr Treygar, are you all right?”

“I’m not a tyr,” he answered, as though that was important. He thought he should feel suicidal right at that moment, but that would have been absurd and melodramatic. This wasn’t about him and his honor. It was about that child.
 

Spilled grain crunched under the boot of a square-faced soldier as he stepped toward them, and the world suddenly reappeared. Everyone was looking at Tejohn as though he was the one in trouble.
 

“Are you really Tyr Tejohn Treygar?”

If this soldier spoke a word of admiration to him, Tejohn would strike him dead on the spot. No one was going to treat him like a hero--like a famous man--not today.
 

“It were my words that hurt him,” the old farmer said. “I have to be the one to straighten things out. Tyr Treygar, if that’s who you are, you didn’t kill a little child. Not even a debt child. I saw her change into that creature--the three of us did, right here on the floor. Her body tore apart like the clothes of a werebear in a little child’s story.”

“It’s true,” his wife said. “The creature killed her, and then it ate her. You didn’t harm that little child. She was already gone.”
 

“As far as any of us is concerned, we died the moment we were bitten. It’s like we have poison in us, but the poison won’t let us hurry to our own preferred end.”

The stout young mother spoke up. “Can we be cured on a blessing stone? A bless...
Bless
--”

“A sleepstone?” Tejohn asked. She nodded gratefully. Javien turned to Tejohn, a look of warning on his face, but he knew better than to tell the others that the man was a medical scholar. “I’ve tried that. A sleepstone only makes the transformation come on stronger and faster.”
 

The woman looked down at the children at her feet and began to weep. The two smallest had curled up on a burlap sack and fallen asleep, while the six-year-old crouched beside them, her eyes wide.
 

Javien stepped forward. “I know I’m not wearing my robes of office right now, but I’m a beacon. If you need help to ease the children out of this world without pain, it is my duty to provide that help.”
 

Tejohn grasped his elbow. “Javien...” What had he planned to say? He couldn’t imagine.
 

“Back home, it was my duty as a beacon to slaughter spring lambs for the Festival of the Tides.” He said this as much for the mother’s sake as anyone’s. “I can do it in a way that is utterly painless. They don’t have to die in pain and fear when the curse takes them. They can leave The Way peacefully, in your arms.”

“Yes,” the woman said, and who else had any say in the matter? “I would bless that. Yes.” She looked down at the little ones again, and her cheeks shone with tears.

The female soldier stepped in front of Tejohn. “You promised us a quick, clean death, my tyr. If I had to take a sword thrust, I’d prefer to take it from a Finshto hero. Will you keep that promise?”

“Outside,” Javien said, as though the answer to that question was already a given--and of course it was. “I will look after the mother. Try not to make a noise that will wake the children.”

Tejohn turned and went out into the muddy yard. The rain still fell in the same misting drizzle, but no one seemed to mind. They strode out toward the woodpile, partly because there was nothing else to catch their attention but the brilliantly burning barn fire.
 

“I want to go first,” said a soldier that had not spoken before. He looked terrified.
 

“Me and the wife were bitten first,” the old man said sulkily, “but it’s all right, I guess.”
 

Tejohn set his shield and spear against the wall of the house, being careful to keep his eyes downcast. He didn’t want to see what was happening inside. When he turned to the others, he felt oddly defenseless, as though he was going into battle unarmed.
 

The man dropped to his knees like a defeated soldier awaiting execution. He looked terrified. Tejohn came close, drew his sword, and knelt with him in the mud.
 

“I’ll keep quiet for the little ones,” the soldier said. “I promise.”
 

“Do you want to say a prayer?”
 

“I finished all my praying.”
 

Tejohn thrust the point of his sword up into the man’s heart. It was quick and clean, but it was clearly not painless. As the man slumped to the side, Tejohn eased him into the mud.
 

One of the soldiers began to whisper urgently to the others, and the woman with him began to talk to him in quiet, reassuring tones. Tejohn watched the man closely as he wiped off his sword. If the fellow bolted, he would have to run him down or all of this would have been for nothing. But could he catch a fellow more than twenty years his junior?
 

“I guess it’s for us next,” the old farmer said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do it over there, with you behind us. That hill over there is our property, and if I can’t die on it, I’d like it to be the last thing I see.”

“Of course,” Tejohn said, watching the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. The soldier at his feet had a knife at his belt. Tejohn took it and tested the edge. Good.
 

The farmers walked hand in hand to the corner of the muddy yard, not far from where Tejohn had crouched while waiting for Javien’s signal that he’d blocked the back entrance.
 

“There it is,” the old woman said. They looked out at a field of barley on the next hill over, then turned toward each other and held their faces very close.
 

“Grateful am I,” the man said, “to be permitted to travel The Way.”

“Kelvijinian,” the woman answered, as though they were sharing an old joke, “I return to you.”
 

It was a quick knife thrust for them, straight to the heart. The old man grunted, but it was a low, brief sound. Then it was done.
 

Tejohn turned toward the others. There were four more of them, and he was already trying to decide what would be the most humane way to end their lives.
 

It was nearly dark when he finished. The rain had picked up and the droplets made the fire hiss. Tejohn stood staring at it a moment, wondering how he had come to this moment in his life, with the innocent blood of allies on his sword, when Javien emerged from the house.
 

“No one has come about the fire,” the priest said. “If nothing else told us there was something terribly wrong here, that would be it. Farm folk do not leave fires unfought.”
 

“Let’s move them inside,” Tejohn said, “so we can start another and go back to our task.”
 

As Javien moved toward the nearest soldier, he said, “I’ve covered them with a cloth.”

Tejohn was grateful for that in ways he couldn’t express. Together, they carried the bodies inside, then took from them anything of value, which turned out to be seven iron-bladed knives; they didn’t have a speck between them. While the priest poured oil around the main room, Tejohn carried armload after armload of firewood inside.
 

Someone had worked very hard to chop all that wood. It felt like a crime to waste all that effort.
 

Night had fallen by the time Javien cast his little fire spell at the doorway of the house. The flames spread quickly. They stood partway down the hill and watched the house burn. Tejohn thought he ought to say something to the young priest, but nothing seemed appropriate. Javien appeared to be utterly composed, as though his role of beacon protected him from self-doubt.
 

For himself, Tejohn held his spear and shield close. He needed them now in a way he wouldn’t have been able to articulate if someone had asked. They were like a connection to his old self, the one that had never become a king’s shield, a servant, a captive in the dungeons of Ussmajil, or an executioner.
 

They returned to the farmhouse on the high hill where they had spied on the grunts. It was still empty. Tejohn filled two bowls with water while Javien lit the hearth. Then they washed very, very thoroughly.

As usual for late summer, the larder was not well stocked, but they managed to find small meals. Neither ate much. The roof leaked a little but they were glad for a dry corner. Tejohn lay in the darkness and wished he could be far away with his wife and children, living somewhere in the east. He’d sent them away almost three months ago, and he’d expected to be with them again by now. He longed to see his children again.
 

But there was nothing he could do about it. Even if everything went perfectly, he would not see them again for a long, long time.
 

In the dark, when they were supposed to be sleeping, Tejohn could hear the priest weeping quietly. For once in his life, his hand did not fall to his knife. For once, he knew there was no reason to fear a scholar’s tears.

In the morning, Tejohn used a bit of rainwater mixed with wood ash to clean the waterfall insignia off his new shield; he wasn’t a king’s spear and had no interest in impersonating one. Then they scavenged everything they could from the larder--including half a dozen stale sourcakes--and returned to the road. It was still raining. The house and barn they had burnt had already been reduced to charred foundations, but the wheat field was mostly untouched.