The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (9 page)

The old fellow had also received a bowl, but he ate sparingly.
 

As the servants--Tejohn noticed they wore white robes, not red like the priests or gray like his--brought apricots and rice, a young woman in red hurried into the room, a stack of wax tablets in her arms and a stylus tucked behind her ear. She had large, watery eyes and a weak chin. “I’m sorry, Beacon Veliender. I came as quickly as I could.” She set the stack precariously on the edge of the table and sat.
 

“I think,” Beacon Veliender said, turning toward Tejohn, “that it is time for us to have our conversation.”

“You want news,” Tejohn said.
 

“I do,” the priest responded. “Everything.”
 

He glanced at the young woman, her stylus suspended over the tablet. “And why is she here? To share everything I say?”

“Not to share,” Veliender said. “To remember.”
 

Tejohn shook his head. “What I have seen is not for Finstel ears.”

“The King’s soldiers are still searching the streets for you, although most assume you have already escaped the city. The only reason we dare to sit out on the terrace is because the temple and the attached buildings have already been searched. More than once. To take your story to the king now would be an admission of treason.”
 

“Unless,” Tejohn said, “the king arranged for all this.”
 

“Ah!” Her surprise appeared genuine. “Of course! A daring midnight rescue from the king’s own dungeon, and here we are, offering you food... You suspect this is a ruse of King Shunzik’s, yes? To make you tell all your secrets willingly.”
 

“I do. But I am still grateful that I have been permitted to look out over the city with new-found eyes, until they are put out forever.”

“Is that what you think will happen to you? Torture and blindness?”
 

Yes.
Tejohn did not look away from the glowing sunrise. “Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.”
 

They did not speak for a while. Tejohn no longer felt hungry, but he forced himself to finish his rice and drink the heavily diluted wine.
 

But the view! Maybe it was his close call with death or his certitude that he was going back to Shunzik’s dungeons, but this view of the city, with its low flat roofs revealed by the rising sun in slow, specific details, and the thin clouds blowing toward the horizon, astonished him. He could never have expected a gift like this, and he savored it.
 

The whole world was being devoured, and he had failed to save it. Soon, he would be back in chains, screaming under the torturer’s white-hot brand. Until then, he had this.
This.

Veliender pushed her empty bowl away. “According to the stories circulating now, Banderfy Finstel is the one who broke through the Bendertuk shield wall at Toram Halmajil.”

“What does that matter?”
 

“When we tell our children the story of our people, do we lie to them? Or do we tell them the truth, like people of honor? Do we heap false praise onto the lives of our forbearers simply because it benefits us today? I would hope not. The things we have done matter, even if the grunts hunt us to extinction. Did you follow Banderfy through the shield wall?”

Tejohn glanced at the weak-chinned woman sitting on the other side of him. Her stylus was poised above the tablet as though waiting for the command to begin.

“I won’t hear Banderfy’s reputation sullied,” Tejohn said. The woman made tiny scratches into her tablet. Were those his words? “He was a good commander and an honorable man. It was a privilege to serve under him.”

“We don’t want to dishonor him,” Veliender said. “Only tell the truth. Did you follow him through the shield wall or did he follow you?”
 

“He followed me,” Tejohn said. It was an uncomfortable thing to say; boasting was something commanders did, and Tejohn had never been much of a commander. “I would have died if he hadn’t, and we would have never gone on to liberate King Ellifer from Pinch Hall. The victory was his, no matter who split the wall first.”
 

“That’s what our history will record.” Veliender nodded at Ulmasc, and the scribe finished making marks on her tablet and set it aside in favor of a fresh one. Again, she held the stylus over the wax and fell still. “But there are other questions we must record, such as what happened on the first day of Festival.”

The day the grunts invaded. Tejohn closed his eyes, the memory of the initial attack suddenly overwhelming him. He’d been there and seen it, of course. He hadn’t been close enough to see it in the same detail he could see now, but it was enough. The flames, the screaming, the violence, all were as vivid as that same day more than two months before.
 

Glancing back at the city below, he could see more and more detail as the day grew bright: chimneys, puddles on roofs, beggars skulking down streets, and much more. If his vision had been fixed before that day, would his memories of the attack be more vicious and explicit? Would he have seen Queen Amlian’s expression at the moment she died?
 

He couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, even if he wanted to. Veliender refilled his cup.
 

“There are a great many stories circulating through the population about that day. Some say the Evening People came through the portal with grunts on long leashes, like hounds. They say Ellifer cringed from them, and the Evening People showed their contempt by setting the creatures free.” Tejohn snorted in disbelief but said nothing. The priest continued. “In other stories, he stabbed his wife in the leg so the grunts would feast on her while he fled in terror.”
 

“Too clumsy,” Tejohn snapped at her. “If you want to goad me, you’ll need to be more subtle than that.”
 

She bowed her head. “Still, this is the story the King’s people have been spreading. I told you that people tell lies about the past to benefit their present. If no one corrects a false history, Ellifer Italga will be remembered as a coward and a fool.”
 

“Song knows what he did.”
 

“But no human will,” the priest insisted. “Not unless the history can be corrected by someone who was there.”
 

“Song knows,” Tejohn insisted. “That’s good enough for me.”
 

“As a beacon,” Veliender said, trying a new line of attack, “it is my duty to aid and guide the people of Kal-Maddum. All of them. I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s really happening in the world.”
 

Tejohn laughed slightly, but there was no life or enthusiasm behind it. “Everyone has a duty, from the most powerful king to the meanest servant, but only priests and soldiers declare theirs to the world like a badge of honor.”
 

She sighed. “Very true.”
 

They were quiet for a moment. Fire and Fury, could he really tell this story to people who were almost certainly enemies to him and to his king? The more he thought about it, the less sense it made to keep it secret. Even if he could not complete the mission Lar Italga had given him, perhaps someone else would.

“There were no leashes,” he said. Immediately, the scribe began to scratch on her wax tablet. He assumed they would tell him if he needed to speak more slowly. “There were no Evening People, either. The courtyard was decorated for the start of Festival, and the king and queen stood on the dais. When the portal opened, there was a pause that seemed to take forever. Then The Blessing charged through. That’s what the grunts call themselves. The Blessing.”
 

Tejohn told the story just as he remembered it. He described the grunts, described the fight as well as he could, then the escape from the city, with the spears utterly overwhelmed and Peradain burning behind them. He told them about the stay at Fort Samsit, the plan to fly to Tempest Pass to revive a spell that could defeat the grunts, and how that mission failed.

He told them everything, leaving out one detail: that Lar Italga, King Ellifer’s only heir, was bitten by a grunt and had become one himself. In this telling, Lar suspected treachery from one of his people and vanished during the night, determined to carry on his quest alone.
 

Tejohn was sure a single stack of wax tablets would not be enough for his entire story, but there were three left over when he was done. At a nod from Veliender, Ulmasc carefully gathered her things and withdrew.

“Monument sustain us all,” Beacon Veliender said. “King Shunzik did not treat you well, did he?”
 

Tejohn said nothing. He’d expected her to demand that he swear to the accuracy of his story, but now that she hadn’t, he didn’t know what to say next. He noticed the old priest at the next table suddenly staring at him with a fierceness he would never have expected from such a frail figure. He looked slightly familiar, too.
 

“If you think it’s not important,” she continued, “then it is not. Still, I apologize for the way you’ve been treated in our city. Your city, yes? You grew up near here, didn’t you?”

“On a farm. I visited the city, but….”
 

“Now you will see that King Shunzik did not free you and you are in no danger of being sent back to his dungeons. He isn’t clever enough to think up that sort of ruse, not when he thinks he can have his way through brute force. You’ve already seen how he treats his own people, taking everything from them, making slaves of them--we no longer have to obey the Peradaini ban on that word, do we? Let us be done with empty codes. He is making slaves of his own people and working them to death in quarries. And for what? A berm of broken stone?”

She gestured out toward the rising sun, which had broken through the horizon during his story. There, well beyond the city walls, he could see it. A broad, flat stone expanse with a low berm on the border. That was the parade ground where he had marched in formation so many years ago and had worked like a convict only a few days ago. Even at this distance, he could see the berm wasn’t very high. How was it supposed to stop the grunts with that? And where would he find the spears to guard it? “Whose idea was that?”
 

“The king’s himself,” Veliender answered. Her voice and her expression were flat. “He expects his court scholars to break that stone expanse into fertile farmland, and for the city to sustain itself.”

Tejohn glanced out at the city again, which was now teeming with ordinary people hurrying about their business. With his new eyes, he could see them all clearly enough to note their hair color, body shape, and clothing choices. What’s more, the streets were busier than he’d ever seen in his life. Ussmajil was packed with refugees.
 

Even if he could break the parade ground into arable soil--and he couldn’t--there would never be enough land to feed so many. One look at the priest’s face showed she was thinking the same thing. “He’s gone mad,” Tejohn said simply.
 

“Despair has ruined him,” Veliender said simply, as though she was talking about a worn-out water wheel. “He makes useless plans to keep the people busy while he feasts his friends every night. They live like condemned men. Alone of the cities and holdfasts of Peradain, Ussmajil has best chance of withstanding the grunts’ assault, but not with Shunzik Finstel on the throne.”

Tejohn nodded. Ussmajil was the city of his childhood, no matter that it was less than half the size of the Morning City. He was grateful for the chance to see it one more time.
 

The beacon wasn’t finished. “That’s why we were hoping you would kill him for us.”

Chapter 6

The last building lay on the far side of the second tower at the end of another low corridor. It was only one story tall, and not only was the room square, the floors were covered with stinking tidal-flat mud. It was possible, Cazia thought, that there was no floor, just heavy stone walls set into the mud. There were no windows, cubbies, beds, or other structures, and the only break in the wall was an open arch that faced away from the ocean.
 

Cazia, Ivy, and Kinz sat hunched in the low corridor, their shoulders pressed against the stone roof. None of them wanted to step out into the reeking floor with its mosquitoes and tiny, swarming gnats. They could see that just beyond the arch, there was a small pool, ringed with a solid hoop of black stone, that rose and fell like a breathing creature.
 

“I will go,” Ivy said, stepping suddenly into the squelching mud. Cazia immediately followed. She hadn’t realized the others were waiting to see who would go first; she assumed that none of them would leave the clean, dry corridor stone.
 

Ivy and Cazia took cautious steps toward the arch. If there was anything interesting in this room, it was buried in the mud, and that’s where it would stay. However, the little pool of water, which was only about ten feet wide, was another matter. Cazia cautiously approached. The way the surface moved suggested it was being pumped, but that didn’t make any sense. “Why is it moving up and down like that?”