The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (31 page)

The old soldier and the young priest continued on their way, heading toward the west.

Chapter 21

Javien insisted they hurry. He wanted to travel light, sleep as little as possible, and waste no time with talk. Tejohn understood and agreed. The sooner they accomplished their task, the sooner they could turn the war against the grunts around. Maybe then they would feel like heroes instead of butchers.
 

If they were lucky. If they managed to make their way to Tempest Pass alive, and if the spell was there, and if Ghoron Italga--once the heir to the throne of Peradain and now little more than a scholar hermit--was willing to teach it to them.
 

That was a lot of “ifs” to contend with. The only certainties they had were that they had just committed murder and that no one on the road was going to welcome them.
 

At the first village they came to, they faced a local militia with a line of spears and three archers. Not only were strangers not welcome there—even beacons wearing their red robes—but half the militia followed them eastward on the road, and away from Salt Pass, to make sure they didn’t try to circle around and approach the village from the north or south.
 

Of course, once they were alone again, Tejohn and Javien
did
circle around, but they kept well clear of the village. They found a little stream they could follow and, feet wet for an entire day, tramped northward among the rocks.

Near the end of the day, a farmer spotted them and, with grudging politeness, asked them to get out of the stream. He pointed with his bill toward a deer path, promising it would lead them to a ferry.
 

Tejohn had the feeling the farmer wouldn’t have been so polite had they been unarmed.
 

Javien was quite disturbed to hear that they would need a ferry. His maps suggested there were no large rivers or lakes nearby, but it turned out there were. The next morning, the path emptied onto a road and they saw a lovely little freshwater lake. It was too small for most maps but long enough that it would have taken a day to pass around it.
 

The ferrywoman demanded double her usual fare. No one was crossing southward these days, she said, and who would pay for her trip back home?
 

Tejohn told her he would pay her two sourcakes for the crossing, and she agreed so readily, he realized she would probably have taken half of one. As she hauled on the rope to pull the ferry raft across, she informed them that her cousin out west wouldn’t even come near the lakeshore until his passengers had stripped to their skin to prove they had no bite marks, patches of blue fur, or bare eyeballs poking through their chests. Rumor had it that the grunts could look out of a person’s palm, or back, or bum, and see who nearby was worth the eating.
 

The road they were on would take them to the pass they wanted, she assured them, although why they would want to venture so close to dangerous lands, she couldn’t imagine. Best head for home and keep well away from the Bendertuks to the west. Rumor and better than rumor said their troops were running wild on the border, killing anyone who so much as looked at them funny. Tyr Finstel’s spears and bows were all to the south, driving away grunts, so Tyr Bendertuk was having his way with the Finshto common folk.
 

On the far shore, Tejohn handed over the two cakes, then promised to keep away from the border. He also warned her that Tyr Finstel had crowned himself King Shunzik, and she ought to take care to call him that, just in case.
 

“That news itself is almost worth the price of the crossing,” she said, although she didn’t hand back the food. Instead, she took the tiniest pinch from one and ate it as if it was the first meal she’d tasted all day.
 

Tejohn and Javien watched her haul herself back across the water. “It’ll be better in the fall,” Tejohn said. “There will be less hunger once the harvest comes in.”

“Assuming anyone is here to eat it.”

We’ll make sure of that,
he wanted to answer, but it seemed like a hollow promise.
 

Javien changed back into his red robes, looking in dismay at Tejohn’s gray. The priests’ red was supposed to ease their passage across borders; they could not reach the pass without crossing into Bendertuk lands.
 

Once he had put on his red, as he called it, the young priest became much more talkative. He suddenly had a hundred questions about the grunts. Did they mate or did they only spread by biting? Were they male and female? Did men transform into male grunts, or was there no correlation?
 

The priest seemed to have an alarmingly nonchalant attitude about changing gender. Certain swamp animals in the Redmudd homeland were known to switch from male to female, he claimed, and there was no reason he shouldn’t expect to see it in more complex creatures, especially magical ones. Tejohn admitted that he hadn’t thought to check and hoped that would be the end of the conversation.
 

Javien also wondered what they did in environments where they took over. How did they find balance? Even if they transformed humans only and not lower animals--something he was not convinced of yet--their appetites would turn their habitats into wastelands.

“That makes sense,” Tejohn interrupted. “Say that someone wanted to conquer the Evening People; they would unleash The Blessing in their homeland and let the curse spread until the land was emptied. The grunts would transform or devour everything, then die off themselves. How long do you think that would take? Two generations? Three? It’s war by proxy. The grunts do the fighting and then vanish, leaving open land for the taking.”

“That would be an ingenious plan,” Javien said.
 

“It’s dishonorable,” Tejohn said sourly. “It reeks of cowardice. The only real question is this: did the power behind the grunts intend for their attack to spill over into Kal-Maddum, or was that an accident?”

“Either way, if their magic is that potent, I wouldn’t want to face them.”
 

Tejohn grunted in response. If their enemy, whoever it was, didn’t have the courage to march out to face those they intended to conquer, they deserved a spear to the guts. The best way to deal with a scholar--or wizard, or whatever these things were--was with a piece of sharp metal, expertly applied.
 

Near the end of that day, they crossed the top of a hill and came upon a little girl squatting at the side of the road. She held out her hand, mutely begging. She looked to be no more than eleven, and half starved.
 

“I’m sorry, little one,” Javien said. “We have a long way to go and little enough for ourselves.”

“Nonsense,” Tejohn said. He crouched beside her and unwrapped a sourcake. She reached for it, but there was some reluctance in it. “Of course. You don’t want this.” He withdrew the cake and broke a piece of meatbread from the heel of the loaf. The girl waited for him to offer it, then snatched it from his hand.
 

“My...friend,” Javien said, rightfully cautious about using honorifics. “We don’t have enough for ourselves, let alone every hungry child we find by the side of the road. The Way is full of hardship as well as comfort.”
 

“Yes, it is,” Tejohn answered. “However, the road will sometimes have a lookout. Is there safe passage, little one?” He took out the smallest of the iron knives he’d taken from the bodies at the farmhouse.
 

The blade was short and slender, the wooden handle cracked, but the girl’s eyes lit up when he held it out to her. She laid her hand on it, but Tejohn didn’t let go. “Is there a safe path?”

She nodded at him, then led them partway down the hill they’d just climbed. Pulling aside a branch, she revealed a deer path into the woods. It didn’t look promising, but the girl made a motion like a swimming fish and smiled at them.

“Left, right, then left?” Tejohn asked. She nodded, looking around as if fearful she might be caught. He gave her the knife and watched her run to the top of the hill.

The deer path was so narrow, he had to sling his shield onto his back. The priest followed him into the trees. “Bandits?”
 

“Common enough,” Tejohn said. “In the summer months before harvest, some folk will ease their hardship by crouching by the side of the road, bow in hand. They’re usually reasonably polite about it, but sometimes you meet someone with a taste for killing.”

“I’d rather avoid that, if I could.”

“And I’d rather not have our food and weapons stolen.”
 

The path led through swampy lowland, and they had not emerged from the thickets when the sun went down. They slept in trees without a fire and, in the morning, emerged onto the road near a village wall. There were no Bendertuk soldiers in sight, but they were questioned vigorously at the gate before they were allowed inside. The beacon was a portly fellow who talked quite a bit about the bad harvest of the previous year. He also asked a few vague questions about how the two visitors had come to town. When he found they had not taken the road, he scowled as though he’d lost a business opportunity.
 

Javien hated the man from the first and raged about him for half the day once they returned to the road.
 

The next village was too small to have a beacon of their own, but the people there were happy to feed and house them once Javien agreed to marry one couple and divorce two others, asking only for donations of meatbread in payment. Both men heard endless complaining about the cost of the local beacons’ services, even when they didn’t have to travel.

The next village had grown beyond its walls and offered sleeping arrangements inside its growing temple. The village after that had been sacked and burned to the ground by Bendertuk spears. The village after that refused to allow them through the gates. The village after that was in mourning.
 

And so it continued, for day after day, as they approached the mountains of the Southern Barrier.

Chapter 22

The room was not the most lavish Cazia had ever seen, but it was a huge step up from the last few months. There was a frame stretched with soft boq skins that served as a bed, and a row of chests and wicker baskets that held clothes and other essentials. It reminded her of the belongings they’d found in the ruined camp out in the Sweeps. Great Way, that seemed so long ago.
 

Goherzma--apparently, that was his name, as unlikely as that sounded--stayed in the corridor. Cazia heard heavy footsteps approach, then a conversation in Toal, then the footsteps retreated. The girls crouched silently in the room, keeping well back from the windows.
 

The door shut again, and the man returned. He slid his sword into a sheath in a wicker basket by the entryway, and looked over the three girls.
 

He bowed again, more deeply this time, and Ivy stood up straight. The two of them exchanged a fair bit of chatter. Cazia couldn’t follow it, but the man gave her a single dark look, which she didn’t like at all.
 

He was older than she’d first thought, possibly forty or more. He had the arms and shoulders of a fighting man, but there was a doughy layer around his middle that suggested retirement, promotion, or soft duty. His face and hands were unscarred.
 

“The princess,” Kinz whispered, “is telling him how we were made prisoner here and how we have been treated. Apparently, her cousin is inside the fort.”
 

“Probably enjoying that feast,” Cazia said. She spoke in a normal tone, which made the swordsman look sharply at her again. Let him. She was not a thief or a spy and she would not whisper like one.
 

Kinz stopped whispering but she did not speak at normal volume, either. “They are discussing the wisdom of summoning him immediately or waiting for him to return on his own. If the alarm does not stop, he might be quartered in the hall for the night. Now Ivy is telling the man to fetch her cousin right away. She does not want to wait.”