The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (5 page)

Chapter 3

The water was brutally cold. Any satisfaction Cazia felt when the carapace of the Tilkilit warrior cracked beneath her weight was spoiled by the icy shock of her plunge.

Save us! We’re going to swim to the northern bank. Send help!
Cazia’s heart wasn’t in the game any more, and she doubted the queen would be fooled much longer. She waited for some sort of response--a scream of rage, a wave of hatred that would make her black out and drown--but if the Tilkilit queen knew what was happening, she was silent.
 

Always try to stand in a current.
Right. Cazia pulled her heels up to her rear end and rolled onto her back. Her hiking skirts were already soaked through but the water was fast and turbulent enough that it pitched her above the surface where she could gasp for air.
 

Cazia had expected the warriors to attack from the banks and the tree trunk, but now that she was in the water, she had no idea if they were. The river was so loud and churning so crazily that a full-grown okshim could have fallen in beside her and she wouldn’t have known. She swept by something huge and unyielding--she didn’t touch it, but she felt the way it broke the river’s flow--then sank deep into the turbulent waters.
 

There was no choice; Cazia stripped off her jacket. Her Fire-taken skirts ought to go, too, but the knots would be impossible. She kicked off her boots and struggled to the surface.
 

As soon as she reached the air, the water swept southward around a bend and grew calm. She’d survived, somehow, despite everything. Elation rushed through her, then panic. Ivy! Where was Ivy!

Cazia kicked, raising herself as high out of the water as she could. There was Ivy, floating downstream with Kinz. They were shoulder to shoulder, leaning back as if lounging on a couch. Cazia resolved to do the same.
 

After one glance behind her, of course. She couldn’t resist one glance.
 

The fallen tree was out of sight behind the stones and trees at the bend of the river, but there was something back there. Cazia squinted toward the northern bank and saw something moving in high, bounding arcs. The Tilkilit were coming after them.
 

Cazia rolled over and kicked toward Ivy and Kinz. They were only twenty or thirty feet ahead, but she couldn’t close the distance. Worse, the effort was exhausting.
 

“They’re coming!” she yelled, a splash of river water garbling the words and nearly choking her. She lay back, her legs stretched in front of her, the way Kinz and Ivy were, while the older girl turned to look at their pursuers.
 

The Tilkilit were fast, but they didn’t have stamina. If the girls stayed afloat for long enough, they would outpace the warriors and be free.
 

As long as they didn’t drown. As long as they didn’t freeze. As long as they weren’t thrown over a waterfall or—Great Way, keep us on your path—swept out to sea.
 

No. Cazia drove those thoughts from her mind. They would escape or they would die. She was not going to fall under the Tilkilit’s power again.

So, escape. As the river turned eastward again around a massive boulder, she began to plot out their next move. Assuming all three of them survived, they would have no food, no clean water but what she could conjure, no way to make a fire except by her magic. Their clothes would be soaked through and they would have no weapons. Not even knives, Monument sustain her. Her dart spell would work on stones and wooden stakes, if it came to that, and she hoped it wouldn’t. Kinz, accustomed to her flint hatchet, would probably be satisfied with a sharpened stick.
 

But they would need to find another column of vines that went as close to the top of the Northern Barrier as possible, and then they would need to make their way back down. Of course, if they could find the tunnel she dug on the way in, that would be best.
 

Cazia glanced to her right, peering through the mists. The cliffs were over there, but she could not see them. She had no idea how far away the mountains were or how to find their entry point. Not that it mattered, as long as Kinz still had that bag of Tilkilit stones.
 

It wasn’t long before the water didn’t feel cold at all, which was probably not a good thing. She tried to loosen the knots holding her skirts to her hips, but her fingers were too numb to make much progress, and wet knots were always harder than dry ones. They had to get out of the water as soon as they reached a safe distance from their captors…whatever that was.
 

The current swept them around bend after bend, but always they continued generally eastward. The river widened and the water slowed. The banks receded from view on either side and the sky above them showed a lot of blue. It was a beautiful blue of the sort that makes families put aside an hour’s chores to walk through meadow or just to thank The Way for a beautiful summer day.
 

But it was dangerous for Cazia, Ivy, and Kinz, because it meant they were exposed to the eagles. Cazia couldn’t see any of the raptors floating above them, but it was only a matter of time before one spotted them.
 

Kinz was already stroking toward the southern bank, with Ivy clinging to her back. Cazia felt a twinge of guilt that she’d left Kinz to care for the girl, and began to paddle after them. She’d always considered herself a strong swimmer, when she got the chance, but she couldn’t help but envy the older girl’s long, steady strokes. Worse, she realized the current had already carried them out of the river into a lake as large as Peradain itself.

Then she looked down. The water was cold and clear, and the slanting early sunlight allowed her to see all the way to the bottom.
 

There was a skull of a gigantic creature below her. It was lying on its side, its eye socket empty of everything but a few wriggling fish. It was long and flat like a sword’s blade, and its mouth was jagged with impossible teeth. Each of those teeth was as long as an Ozzhuack spear.
 

The sight made Cazia gasp with terror and she nearly choked on a mouthful of water. The creature had massive ribs that came near the surface of the water but no limbs that she could see. Fish clustered around the last few strips of flesh clinging to the bones, slowly tearing it away to expose the white. Was this creature some sort of serp--

An eel. A surge of raw terror rushed through Cazia. They had come much, much closer to the ocean than she had thought. Suddenly, the Tilkilit no longer mattered. The monstrous eagles above no longer mattered. All she cared about now was that they not be swept out to sea.
 

She swam as hard as she could, doing her best to mimic Kinz’s style, but it didn’t seem to matter. The flow had her and was driving her eastward. The river, which she had thought would save her, was quickly becoming her Enemy.
 

Or maybe not. The current flushed her into a backwater on the southeastern end of the lake, and when she finally crawled through the stony shallows toward the shore, she saw Kinz and Ivy had already collapsed onto the grass.
 

“I thought you could make to swim,” Kinz admonished, and really, Cazia was not in the mood.
 

“Not drowning is swimming,” she snapped. Her teeth were chattering and her limbs numb. The stones should have been painful against her bare feet, but she couldn’t feel it. She scrambled wearily off the shore and wrapped her arms around Ivy. The princess’s lips were blue and her eyes were half closed. Cazia pulled her close and held on, hoping her own shivering body would warm the girl, even if just a little.
 

Kinz’s lips were blue, too, but she had the strength to move around. “One of those little fish bit me. I--” An idea caught hold of her and she hurried into the trees, emerging a short time later with a long, rough wooden branch. With a flattish piece of flint she found near the water, Kinz shaved branch and leaf off of it, then created a rough point.

Then she went down into the shallow eddy, going deep enough that the small bloody bite mark on her calf was below the surface. She stood utterly still, makeshift spear at the ready, waiting for her own blood to draw in a fish.
 

A sharpened stick
. Cazia had been right, and the image made her laugh weakly. Kinz gave her a flat look that Cazia couldn’t read, but she looked away. Ivy shivered against her and Cazia began to rub the girl’s arms and hands to warm them.
 

If only they had a fire--

“Inzu blesses us,” Kinz said. She strode into deeper water and pulled from the water the strangest white fish Cazia had ever seen. No, it was her jacket, then both of her boots. The current had driven them into the eddy, just as it had driven her. Kinz carried them up onto the shore to dry.
 

There was more flint scattered around the water’s edge, along the steep banks of gray silt. Grass grew just beyond that, lying atop the hills around them like a rough blanket. Black-barked trees with yellow-green leaves stood even farther back from the water, casting heavy shadows on the ground around them.
 

Cazia hissed and pointed out into the deeper water. A brownish hump with little splashes at its edges floated toward them like a cautious predator. “Get back!” Cazia whispered harshly, but Kinz ignored her, moving forward with the spear held at the ready.
 

Everything was quiet, and Cazia heard the distant crashing of ocean waves upon a shore.
 

Kinz, now thigh-deep in the water, stabbed toward the brown hump and lifted her spear. There was a wriggling fish on the end. With a flick, she slung it onto the grass, then struck four more.
 

Eventually, she cried out and backed sloshing from the water. Cazia suddenly recognized the brown hump; it was the Tilkilit warrior she had jumped onto, and the splashes around it had been fish feeding on the corpse. Kinz’s loud rush to shore had frightened them away.
 

“I can start a fire,” Cazia said. She could feel her magic inside her; it wasn’t strong, but it was enough to light kindling.
 

“Sit. You have the deep chill,” Kinz said. Her lips were returning to their natural color. “It is making your thinking weak. We are being hunted from the west and from the sky above. No fire.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Cazia insisted, certain that her thinking was completely logical. “How are we going to eat fish without--”

Kinz laid the largest fish on a rock and bashed its skull with a second rock. Then she dug her fingers into the gill and tore the head off. After splitting it open down the center with a piece of flint, she offered the raw wet flesh to Ivy.
 

Under normal circumstances, Ivy and Cazia would have recoiled in disgust at the idea of eating raw fish, but the cold water had stolen their strength. Ivy tore into the flesh with all the energy she could bear, and Cazia did the same. After they’d chewed every morsel from the skin and spit out the scales, then stripped the bones down, Kinz held out a little red organ to the princess. “The heart,” she said. “It will give you strength.”
 

Ivy took it and swallowed it down.
 

Kinz glanced at Cazia as she reached into the other guts. “You should have the lungs to make calm your breath.”
 

“Ugh,” Cazia said. “Don’t ask me to eat lungs.”
 

Kinz poked Cazia’s forehead with one bloody finger. “See? Weak thinking. Fish do not have lungs. Now, sit.”
 

Kinz gave them a second fish to share, and she ate one herself. Cazia was sure the others had cheated her out of her fair portion, but she knew better than to make the accusation aloud.
Weak thinking.
Kinz and Ivy would never cheat her. Cazia was simply hungry, cold, and confused.
 

They ate everything off those fish that Kinz would allow, but it wasn’t enough. It was still summer, and as the day grew warmer, Ivy’s color returned. Cazia walked to the lake’s edge to look for more fish, but the warrior’s body had been swept back out into deeper water and there were no more fish to be caught.
 

“We should get moving,” Ivy said. “I want to see the ocean.”
 

“What?” Cazia exclaimed, her voice so loud that she slapped her hand over her mouth. “No, we can’t go near the
ocean
. We’re trying to get out of this valley alive, remember?”
 

“We can make a detour,” Ivy said. “I have never seen this part of Boskorul’s realm; none of my people have.”

“It’s dangerous.”
 

“As an Ergoll, I am expected to make religious pilgrimages to parts of Boskorul’s realm. It is a sacred tradition. None of my people will have seen this part of the sea before today, and it would be an unforgivable insult to spurn the chance. It would offend our god.”
 

Kinz shrugged. “I vote against making offense to the gods, even the gods of your folk traditions.”