The Way Into Chaos (50 page)

By midmorning, the sun became hot enough to burn the fog away. The girls had to crawl under an outcropping of stone to hide. “Listen!” Kinz hissed.
 

They listened. As the fog retreated down the mountainside, they heard a strange tapping noise retreat within it. An eagle swooped low, almost down into the swirling mists toward the sound, but flew upward again with empty talons.
 

“What makes a noise like that?” Ivy whispered. “It sounds like someone drumming the fingernails on a piece of horn.”
 

No one could answer, and they stayed under cover during the hot part of the afternoon. Cazia was uncomfortable, but also so exhausted from the climb that she fell asleep. It was well after dark when she woke to the sounds of Ivy and Kinz arguing with hissing voices over the empty canteens.

“I can fill them,” Cazia said. She was parched herself, and while she knew the spell would increase her curse, she had been aching to use one of the Gifts all day. And what did it matter, anyway?

“No.” Ivy answered, putting her hand on Cazia’s shoulder. “There is no rush. We can go a day without water.”
 

“My spells have gotten stronger. I could probably fill them all at once.”

Kinz shook her head and stuffed the canteens into her pack. “You only have the few more in you, yes? Save them for when we are desperate.”
 

They slept through the night, waking a few hours before dawn. They didn’t wait; moonlight lit the fog well enough to cast everything in a diffuse light. Kinz tried to pretend she knew exactly which way to go, but Cazia could see that she was putting on a show. No matter.
 

They almost tripped over another column of woody vines, but unlike the one near the top of the mountain, this one creaked under their weight and sagged alarmingly. The tapping noises grew louder, then softer, moving closer, then farther away. Cazia imagined an old man below them so blinded by the fog that he went about tapping a cane against the rocks. The image was so absurd that she had to stop climbing and cover her mouth. The magic inside her wanted to scream with laughter.
 

Kinz disappeared below but Ivy paused to lay her hand on Cazia’s shoulder. “Are you well?” she whispered.
 

I think I’m going mad.
No, that wasn’t something you said to a twelve-year-old girl. She shut her eyes. There was nothing absurd about their situation. Ivy and Kinz had been important to her once... Well, maybe not Kinz. Magic had taken that connection away, and she would never return to herself if she was not ready to fight for them. What’s more, if she turned back without discovering the secrets of this valley, she would have hollowed herself out for nothing.

Fury guide me. Fury, I need your spark to protect my friends.
She felt it kindle again, that tiny bit of heat that showed her god was still alive and still active within her. What magic had done to her could not be undone, not by her, but she could still fight against it. She could still
try
to remain herself.
 

Ivy was waiting. “I’m just getting ready,” Cazia whispered, and it was almost true. “But stop paying attention to me; look out for yourself.”
 

At the bottom of the column, they found themselves on a grass slope. Ivy immediately lay out flat against it, pressing her face among the blades to smell them. Kinz touched her shoulder and, through gestures, bid her string her bow. The tapping sound returned, and Ivy quietly did as she was told.
 

They could only see a dozen feet ahead of them in the mist, and the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere. By unspoken agreement, they did not speak. Cazia heard water lapping against rocks and moved toward it, idly wondering if she should feel afraid but glad that she didn’t. Hent had been so certain she would die in this place….

The gray silhouette of a boulder loomed in the dim mists. She moved toward it almost out of instinct simply because it was a landmark, and discovered it wasn’t a boulder after all. It was a skull. It lay crooked against the ground, with a single, massive eye socket in the middle of its face. Broken tusks stuck out from the sides of its ugly mouth.
 

She rubbed her hands over the rough bone--were her own bones this rough? The dragon’s had been smooth. Ivy came up behind her, then Kinz, but neither of them wanted to touch the skull. Maybe she should have been frightened by it, too, but instead she just found it fascinating.
 

Besides, they needn’t be afraid of a skull. They should be afraid of whatever had killed it.
 

Cazia turned to them and touched her ear. After listening for a moment, they heard the faint sound of water. Great Way, they were so thirsty. They moved carefully around the bones, licking their lips.

The ground sloped downward, the air grew warmer and the mist thinner. The sun was coming up, somewhere, because the mist seemed to glow faintly.
 
They came to a long mound of loose dirt that stood higher than their heads. It extended into the mists beyond where they could see, and they had choice but to climb over it.

On the other side, the soil became muddier and the mist thinner still. Kinz began to push the grass flat with her feet so she could step on it. Cazia found a place where stones had fallen from the mountainside above, and she walked across them until she reached the water.
 

Little wisps of steam rose from it, clearing away the mist nearby. Just like the heat of the day, she thought. The water was little wider than a small pond--a distance of some thirty paces--and it felt a bit scummy. It would have been nice to know why it was so warm, but she didn’t see much hope of discovering that.
 

“I do not think it is safe to drink,” Kinz whispered. Cazia figured she was right, but dipped her hands into it anyway. After days of spellcasting, moving rocks, and climbing down the rough vines, she figured the heat would feel good.
 

It did, actually. The warmth was soothing for all of two heartbeats, when she felt a tiny bite on the side of her hand.
 

“Ouch!’ she exclaimed, yanking her hand back. There, stuck to the side of her hand, was a little round fish no larger than her earlobe. As she watched it drink her blood, it turned gray and died, falling into the water with a tiny splash.
 

The pond was full of those tiny fish. A drop of blood fell from her hand, and the fish fled from it as though it was poison.
 

Cazia crept back up the rocks. The injury was tiny—if it didn’t get infected, there wouldn’t be any problem with it. She sucked out a bit of her own blood and spit it onto the rocks.
 

The other girls waited for her by edge of the water. “Sorry for the noise,” she whispered, “but—”

The tapping sound returned, louder than ever. All three of them turned toward the water, but they couldn’t see what was making the noise. They slowly withdrew toward the mists just as the wind shifted direction, and a sour, acrid, burning stench made Cazia’s nostrils tingle. A second tapping sound joined the first.
 

Whatever was making that noise, Cazia’s outcry had caught its…
their
attention. She glanced at Kinz and Ivy again, both of whom were carefully retreating toward the giant skull, their gazes turned toward the sound. She wanted to cry again, although she couldn’t understand why. Yes, she might have just gotten them all killed, but even that didn’t seem terribly important.
 

Kinz was right. She had been Cursed. Magic had left her full of miseries she couldn’t identify but no room for other human feelings. All she had left was a holy spark, and what good was that?
 

She had brought the tapping closer. It only seemed sensible that she should
 
lead the danger, whatever it was, away from Kinz and the princess. Besides, she was genuinely curious what it could be.
 

Ivy had an arrow nocked, but now more than ever before, her weapon looked like a tiny thing--a toy for hunting squirrels. Cazia laid her hand on Ivy’s shoulder, encouraging her to get low to ground beside the skull. Of course, Kinz had Cazia’s spear.
 

“I’ll be right back,” Cazia lied. Lying was easy now. “Keep quiet.”
 

She snatched a fistful of squarish teeth from beside the broken tusk and hurried into the mists before they could respond. She crouched behind a tree and looked back; they hadn’t tried to follow her. A few days before, she would have been disappointed, but now she felt an odd satisfaction. She’d crossed the mountains to discover a secret, but now all she wanted to do was prove Hent right.
 

What am I doing? What is wrong with me?

She hurried into the trees, circling around the steaming pond. The trees she passed were spindly and narrow, with scorch marks low on the trunk; a fire had passed through here recently. She threw one of the teeth in the general direction of the pond.
 

She heard a satisfying splash, followed by a rustling of grasses. Something was moving toward her, and it sounded big.
 

Now would have been the time for her fear to really grow, but it didn’t happen. She loitered by the tree, waiting for the creature, whatever it was, to appear out of the mists.
 

And she waited. Whatever it was, it wasn’t in a hurry. It occurred to her that she could be just as cautious, so she moved backwards into the trees. Her feet made the grass rustle, but she didn’t mind, not if it drew the thing toward her.

The fog thickened and her view of the forest around her shrank. She felt lost, cut off from the world. If she died here, her bones would lie in the grass for ages, just like the ones behind her. Not that it mattered.
 

Still, she couldn’t help but be terribly curious how it would all turn out.

She came to a sturdy-looking oak broad enough to hide behind. Far enough. She circled it and crouched low on the bare roots, peering around the edge back the way she came. Her hand rested on the tiny quiver at her hip. It was still full.

The tapping had stopped but she could still hear the rustling of grass and bushes. She wondered, almost idly, if the thing would be too big to follow her between the trees, and whether that would be a good or a bad thing.
 

Except it wasn’t a single large creature. What came out of the mists were five or six figures with round, helmeted heads and long spears. They were only silhouettes, but she was vaguely disappointed. She was honestly hoping to see a real dragon, or perhaps one of the one-eyed beasts.
 

As the warriors came closer, she realized they weren’t wearing helmets after all. Their heads were just strangely shaped because they weren’t human. They were as small as Ivy and even more slender. That awful acrid smell came off them in waves, and as one shifted its spear, she saw that its arm was as thin as a broomstick.
 

She leaned back out of view, hoping they hadn’t seen her, and threw three of the disgusting gray teeth out into the mists in the opposite direction. One struck a tree trunk, making a sound like a snapping twig, and the other two rustled some unseen bushes. Behind her, she heard a pair of sharp taps and smelled a new level of awful stink; it occurred to her that they were talking to each other through their taps and scents. If only she’d thought to touch her translation stone...
 

It was too late for that now. She was already doing the hand motions to cast her fire spell. Great Way, but it felt good to do magic again after so many days. She had barely started the spell before the power behind it opened in a way she had never felt before.
 

The figures passed her hiding spot just as she finished. As she rolled to her feet, she saw the creatures clearly for the first time.
 

They were insects. Upright insects with segmented bodies wearing red sashes and ribbons over their dark red shells. They had tiny eyes like buttons, and claws over their mouths. Their attention was focused ahead of them, toward the part of the woods where she’d thrown the teeth. Cazia turned to her left--moving away from Ivy and Kinz’s hiding space--and splayed her fingers.
 

Fire poured out of her with an intensity she’d never felt before. It wasn’t like casting a spell; it felt very much like cracking open a forge and releasing the heat within. The flames touched the nearest creature just as it began to turn around, striking its chest, and the thing burst apart like a wheat berry in a campfire.

Cazia’s old self would have been horrified by the gore, but now it was little more than a curious surprise as she ran forward toward the next warrior in the line. It had time to turn before the flames reached it, and the chemicals that sprayed out of the bottom of its skull caught fire. It, too, broke apart and sprayed gore across the grass.
 

Beyond that one were two more. Both tried to leap away, demonstrating startling strength in their legs. Cazia swept her spell to one side, catching the nearest one’s lower body. It landed somewhere outside of her field of vision, but she didn’t think it had survived. Her spell faded and the opening inside her, the one that had funneled so much magic, seemed to fall closed like a sleeping eye.

Cazia hadn’t anticipated that her fire spell would be hot enough to burn away so much fog. She turned hard to the right just as something heavy struck the ground behind her--a spear? She didn’t look back to see. There were more warriors back there, and she wanted to lead them farther into the valley away from her friends.
 

She changed direction several more times as she ran, but if she was dodging weapons, she couldn’t hear them. The mists closed over her again and she kept moving, wondering about the odds of running into something even dangerous ahead of her.
 

She stumbled through a shallow stony stream, making a splash so loud that Mahz herself might have heard it. On the far bank, she stopped running and stamped among the tall grasses, mimicking as best she could the sound of her own running. It didn’t seem likely that she could fool them with the same trick twice, but how smart could they be? They were bugs.