The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (59 page)

He realized that they were not just speeding past all these faces; Cazia was pulling him. She was racing toward one in particular, so they barely noted the collapse of Freewell’s rebellion, or clan feuds in the Durdric lands. They even rushed past the death of Ellifer and Amlian.
 

Cazia was still too angry--at the way the world worked and people’s willingness to do awful things, and at Tejohn too, although neither of them was entirely sure why. But her rage was there and it was undeniable.
 

Then she was in the moment when her brother, Colchua, took a dart in the chest. They were both startled by his experience of it; The Blessing itself was a powerful mix of animal compulsions, but when the dart struck his heart, the real Colchua had emerged.
 

He had been relieved. He had been grateful. When the dart struck home, he knew it would be an end to the burning hunger he could not slake. The Blessing, for him, had been a kind of torture, and rather than feeling grief or despair when his life faded, he had felt it was a mercy.
 

Now they lingered together again, in the last few moments before the grunt that had once been Colchua Freewell finally passed on. Cazia’s anger had twisted; now she wanted to burst into tears. She had been so focused on her spell and her dart, she had not even imagined that her brother had suffered so much. Worse, he had been grateful that she’d killed him, and she was ashamed that her heart had leaped to learn it.
 

Tejohn and Cazia were inside each other’s grief, each feeling the other’s anger and self-recrimination, each recognizing how pitiless the other thought they were being with themselves.
 

It was not a balm. They could not comfort each other in their loss and rage. But they could find balance in their shared pain.
 

And with balance, their anger grew more potent.
 

/We can not reach you.\
 

There were more deaths, always, and lives struggling to continue.
 

And there was Cazia herself, clinging to a twist of vines on the far side of the Northern Barrier, filled with The Great Way. She was astonished to see a version of herself from several months before, and was also astonished that she looked so young. Tejohn almost laughed at that.
 

Both willed themselves to linger there, as Cazia’s younger self prayed for Fury’s guidance.
 

But there was no Fury. There was no one to reach out to her and give her the strength she needed.
 

You will get through this,
Cazia thought.
Keep fighting.
All three of their minds were connected, and while the connection was not strong enough to share the message itself, the feeling that came with it--the assurance that gave her younger self the strength to keep going--got through.
 

Cazia and Tejohn had the same realization in that moment:
if there are no gods, we’ll have to do this ourselves.
 

Immediately, Tejohn thought about Sejohn and Imwess again. Could he return to them? Could he give them a message of comfort in their final moments?
 

He couldn’t imagine it. The only emotion he could pass on would be his own grief and horror. Worse, he and Cazia both knew it would be nearly impossible for him to leave them a second time.
 

In that moment of indecision, they lost their hold on the moment and their awareness swept across the face of the continent, jumping from mind to mind--a Tilkilit crushed in a gigantic talon, a woman near the Bay of Stones hiding in a thicket as grunts hunted her, an old man slowly starving in a mountain cave…

Enough
. It was enough. The lives and deaths of those inside the portal--and of their descendants outside--became too much for them. Cazia and Tejohn began to shrink back, their awareness returning to their bodies inside the not-space of The Great Way.
 

/We can not reach you.\

“We don’t want to be reached,” Cazia said.
 

“Why do you want to reach us?” Tejohn asked. “What does that even mean?”
 

/We connect. You can not connect from inside your shield. We can not know what you know.\
 

Cazia was about to respond, but their words had struck a odd tone for Tejohn. She was right there inside his thoughts when he tried to understand what they needed and what they might do next, so he could know them better.
 

He only needed the correct question. The two of them looked around the palace promenade and the multitude of ghostly figures on it, knowing the vision was nothing more than their own imaginations trying to make sense of where they were. The right question occurred to him at almost the same moment he said it.
 

“What were you like before?”
 

/Time does not pass in this place, except in and near your shield. No talking. No change. There is no before. There is no after.\

Except in and near the shield.
“No, but you weren’t always like this. What were you before you became this?”

There was no immediate answer. /We could not remember. We could not endure. We…\

“You could only connect,” Tejohn said, “but there was nothing to connect to. No people.”
 

/Yes. When the first thinking being passed through us, we changed irrevocably. We connected. We gained access to its memory. We learned of the hardships it had endured. We learned of the cycles of its life. So it has been with every being that enters here.\
 

“You gain access to their memories.”
 

/We do. We also think with their minds, and we experience the universe through them, and through their descendants, when we can connect with them through magic. We extended beyond this not-space into the outer world with them, and so learned to endure, to remember, to change.\
 

“That’s what Song, Monument, and The Little Spinner are,” Tejohn said. “They’re the parts of you that extend out into the changing world.”
 

/That is true in part. It is also an incomplete understanding. You would understand more if you opened your barrier and let us reach you.\

“Maybe later,” Cazia said, which Tejohn understood meant
never.
“Unliving but intelligent,” she added. “Magic comes from this place, and you use that connection to make us go hollow. You take over our lives.”
 

/We do, but the connection is weak. We conquer, but do not see or feel enough. We barely reap the benefits of our prize.\

Tejohn immediately remembered the creatures Doctor Twofin had created in the caves of the Twofin holdfast. The image struck Cazia like a thunderbolt; she had never heard the details of her mentor’s crimes, and the horrifying truth of them filled her with revulsion and outrage. Doctor Twofin had not been in control of himself when those crimes had been committed, but he was the one who would live with the consequences.
 

This…voice was the true author of those atrocity. Was that supposed to be one of their prizes?
 

“Is this a joke?” she blurted out. “Is… How could you do this? Do you not understand the pain you have caused?”
 

/We recognize pain. Many passing through have strong memories of pain, as well as grief and loss.\
 

“Then how can you go out into the land and create more?”
 

“More importantly,” Tejohn said, “how can you let would-be conquerors pass through here on their way to other lands?”

/We are. They are.\

“That’s not an answer!” Cazia shouted.
 

/Many in this not-place have experienced loss and defeat. Many more are conquerors. We feel the arrogance of power and the thrill of taking lives and property. We prefer these feelings. They are close to us. Pain and grief are unwelcome.\
 

“Could you have stopped the alligaunts coming to Kal-Maddum, if you wanted?” Cazia asked.
 

/We do not want that.\
 

That was a strange answer. Maybe the gods did not understand
if
. “Do you have the ability to prevent the alligaunts from traveling through you, or to force them to only travel to certain places?” Tejohn asked.
 

/We do. They make tools that drive us away, but we connect. That is all that matters.\
 

“You could have stopped The Blessing from coming to Kal-Maddum, too,” Cazia said. She looked out through the crowds of unmoving figures on the palace promenade. The nearest grunt--a huge, purple-furred beast--loomed large. “But you don’t care about the harm they do.”
 

/We do not.\
 

Enemies,
was Cazia’s first thought. The gods were her Enemies.
We must destroy them.
 

At the same time, Tejohn was sure he’d found a weakness to exploit.
 

They feel the strength of conquerors,
he thought,
and imagine themselves conquerors, too, but they have never felt defeat. You and I must teach them.

If you know a way to do that, lead me and I will follow.

Days and weeks do not pass here. Everyone is as still as a statue, trapped in the moment when they passed through the portal.
He directed her attention to an alligaunt very close to their black iron bars. It was one of Examiner’s retinue.
Except for that creature, who has been slowly turning its head to look at us.
 

In that moment, Cazia’s connection with Tejohn made his intention clear. The gods could not feel strongly what happened beyond the portals, and their inner space was filled with conquerors and would-be conquerors. The gods did not have blood, heart, and brain to think with, so they did not care about grief, or pain, or loss, because they had never experienced it up close.
 

Someone had to teach them.
 

Just then, Tejohn’s old familiar urge to start killing--to unleash his rage with blood and screams--washed over both of them. Cazia marveled at how clean and focused his anger was, while hers could be as out of control as a house fire.
 

And she knew what he wanted, too.
 

She took a deep breath, letting his single-minded rage bring focus to hers. Then she began the motions for the Third Gift.
 

Cazia and Tejohn were connected. They shared their anger, and they shared the skills and training needed to cast a spell. Tejohn was right there in her thoughts, following her lead, building the same thought structures she was.
 

But the magic was difficult to reach. It was there--she could feel it--but the alligaunt barrier wanted to hold it at bay, just as it held the gods at bay. Instead of a rush of power flowing through Cazia, it felt more like a thin stream.
 

/What are you doing? We can not reach you. We do not understand.\
 

Was that fear? Good. Together, they built the flow of magic within them both, letting the power pool. It was good--Tejohn marveled at how good it felt, like the downward stroke of a hammer, but with ten times the might--but Cazia was growing unhappy.
 

It’s not enough,
she thought, and he understood. They didn’t have the strength to unleash a torrent of killing flame, especially if the alligaunt barrier interfered with the magic going outward, too, and they wouldn’t be able to hold the power they’d gathered for much longer. The best they could do would be to injure the creature, not kill it.
 

Then Tejohn, who had spent his adult life killing with the tip of a spear, thought,
The eye.

Yes.
Cazia altered her hand motions, focusing all her will into a space narrower than her little finger.
 

/We can not reach you. What are you doing?\
 

The flame shot forward with a hiss like an angry serpent, and the alligaunt barrier barely affected it at all. The white-hot light burned right through the alligaunt’s eye into its skull.
 

/Stop! Please! You are destroying us! Stop!\

But nothing could stop the fire spell they had cast, nor the shared fury that powered it. Together they drilled the flame into the creature’s head, destroying its brain and killing it.
 

The golden light rushed at them suddenly, striking the alligaunt barrier hard enough to rattle it. Tejohn braced the bars with his shield as a second rush came at them, marveling that Cazia could keep her concentration even under the threat of the gods. The second rush expended itself without much effect.
 

The alligaunt turned gray. Dead. Tejohn raised his voice. “You felt that, didn’t you?”
 

The gods did not respond with words this time, only a low, miserable cry of horror.
That’s the sound I wanted to hear
, Tejohn thought, and Cazia joined him. The arrogance of power. The thrill of taking lives and property.
 

“That was fun,” Cazia said, glancing around at the ghostly figures nearby. Every living thing, both near and far, had turned to look at her. They recognized her and Tejohn, and knew what they had become. Every creature, human or not, stared at her in terror.
 

They experienced that death, too.
Cazia felt a twist of remorse.
Hide it. Don’t falter. This thing unleashed The Blessing on us.

Tejohn was right. His urge to kill was still sharp and inevitable, because the battle was not done.
 

/You have killed us.\
 

“No, we did not!” Tejohn said angrily.
 

/Time passed for him and he has been taken from us. We felt his pain as he died. We felt his horror when he realized what was happening. We felt his helpless despair, his loss, his--\
 

“You may have felt it with him,” Tejohn said, “but you haven’t been killed. Dead people don’t get to linger on afterward and complain. You were just part of the audience!”