The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (37 page)

Friends were the secret to doing business, she exclaimed, and she had so many! She couldn’t wait to get up into Salt Pass to see her friend Iskol, and after that they would venture into the Sweeps to trade with her friends the miners and herding clans.
 

Tejohn tried to warn her that there might be few customers in the Sweeps this year, considering how much trouble was spreading, but Granny wouldn’t hear of it. She knew how people were. They always needed something, and she was there to trade.
 

They crossed a bridge into Bendertuk territory without any hassle at all. Granny was as friendly with the soldiers as she’d claimed, and they let the wagons pass without incident. Tejohn thought about the spear and shield Granny had insisted on loading into a wagon; walking without it through enemy lands made him feel as though he’d been stripped naked, but he did it and he survived.
 

For sixteen days, they walked through the northeastern corner of the Bendertuk lands, following roads that became steeper with every passing day. Everyone in the caravan except Granny took their turns following the wagons with a broad wooden shovel—okshim patties couldn’t be left in the road. What’s more, a pair of young boys had little wagons of their own, into which the shoveler loaded the dung. Then the boys ran to the front of the caravan and dropped it for the okshim to eat.
 

Yes, Granny assured him, it was revolting, but the beasts would starve if their grasses passed through their bellies only once. What’s more, even the fresh grass cut from the side of the road had to be mixed with dung first; otherwise, the okshim might think themselves in charge of the pack and become unruly. There were tricks to leading a caravan, she insisted, and not everyone knew them. Tejohn better understood his father’s decision to tend sheep and pull his own wagons.
 

Javien stopped at every village and performed weddings, said prayers, or more often, granted divorces. The temples had been emptied at the beginning of summer, they were told, and every beacon in the land had been summoned to the Bendertuk holdfast.
 

In the past, Javien had been happy to accept food and lodging for himself and Tejohn in payment for his services, but Granny explained it would be unfair to expect newlyweds or penniless divorcing miners to host the whole caravan, so at her suggestion, he asked for a small bit of coin, of which she took a reasonable share.
 

The young priest didn’t seem to mind. Javien was careful never to be seen crying in his bedroll, although he did awaken with terrible dreams more than once. He spent his days talking with the merchant families, sharing stories, jokes, and gossip in that easy way that always made Tejohn a little envious.
 

For his part, Tejohn manned the shovel when it was his turn, ate with the group, but otherwise kept to himself. The others knew only that he was a farmer turned soldier and assumed he was the priest’s bodyguard.
 

Eventually, the roads became so steep that the okshim foundered and the families had to get out of the wagons and push. It was strenuous work, but Tejohn did his part. They camped that night in a wide, tree-lined place on the side of the mountain. Tejohn stood at the edge of the little cliff and looked out over the treetops. He would have thought it lovely if it hadn’t been in Bendertuk hands.

Granny Nin came up behind him. “This is the last grove of good hardwood until we cross into the Sweeps. It’s all scrub pine from here.”
 

“I like pine,” Tejohn said. It occurred to him that he hadn’t yet seen a stand of evergreens with his new eyes. There were so many things he wanted to see. “I like that they’re green during the winter.”

This made Granny smile for some reason. “I’m pleased to see you coming this far with us. You and your companion have more than earned your keep. I wonder, though, what you will do after we visit my good friend Iskol at the top of the pass. Will you be turning east with us to visit the mines in the Sweeps?”

Tejohn considered his answer. He and Javien would have to split off from her at some point, but would it be better to announce it after they left the pass or before they visited this friend of hers? Would it even matter?
 

He quickly realized that the delay in his answer was answer enough. She knew he wasn’t heading east. “We have other plans, I’m afraid. Not that you haven’t been wonderful hosts.”
 

“Hosts!” She seemed delighted with him. “You surprise me again. But I wonder if I might change your mind. This is a bad time to travel westward in the Sweeps. The Durdric are a lovely people, as long as you keep away from the Holy Sons. That will be hard to do at the height of summer.”
 

“There are Holy Sons in the east, too. I’ve heard tell of raids on mining camps west of Caarilit.”
 

“I would not put much stock in those rumors, my friend. Miners love to tell stories, and those stories grow like weeds in the telling. I put as much faith in stories of Durdric raids in the east as I do of giant eagles swooping down and carrying people away.”
 

“What about the grunts?” Tejohn said evenly. “Do you believe in them?”

“It’s hard to say. I believe
something
happened in Peradain, but I’m still not sure what.”

“So you don’t credit tales of monsters with pale purple fur--”

“Purple?” she interrupted. “I’d heard they were blue.”
 

“One kind is purple. One kind is blue.”
 

Granny Nin smiled kindly. Even when she was being condescending, she had charm. “You see? The stories change and grow. Oh, please don’t think I’m being rude. I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I’ve heard so many stories in my travels. Mermaids in the high salt-water lakes of the Southern Barrier. The goat people who are at war with them. The secret city of the alligaunts. It’s all very colorful and quite hard to believe.”

“I see your point.”
 

“Peradain has fallen. This we know. But who did it? Think on this: where do blue dyes come from? The Indrega Peninsula. In fact, you can’t make purple without mixing red with blue, yes? And we’ve recently opened trade routes with the Indregai again after many years of conflict. So let me ask you: which seems more likely, that we’ve been invaded by blue and purple monsters or that Peradain was sacked by warriors wearing dyed bear fur?”
 

“Warriors,” Tejohn said flatly.
 

“Perhaps. Another story could be that the Indregai, who have long fought alongside their serpents, have found a new beast to accompany them into battle. Bears, perhaps, with dye splashed onto their backs.”

“Warriors and bears.”

She slapped him playfully on the arm. “Don’t make that face, you.” Tejohn laughed. “Is it any more outrageous than tales of monsters? No, the real dangers here are bandits, and the tyrs in this part of the world never let their bands grow too large. We know how to stand up to them and how to drive them off.”
 

Tejohn couldn’t let that pass. “I’d like to see that.”

They had settled the okshim at the westernmost part of the meadow, where the trees were thinnest, but they had not had a chance to eat. Good. Granny Nin scrounged up eight of them, four men and four women. Grumbling, they took up their unpainted shields and long wooden poles, then formed a shield wall two deep.
 

“They look fine, do they not?” Granny said. “They’re all former soldiers, and the bandits always think twice when they see us.”
 

Tejohn thought they looked adequate. “Bring me my shield and...and a pole, I guess.”
 

One of the young lads ran to the wagon to get it, and a crowd began to gather. Javien stood among them, and he was the only one not smiling.
 

The weight of the pole felt wrong without a spearhead at the end, but he moved his grip farther back. There. The merchants saw that he intended to attack them and, looking a little incredulous, they made ready.

Tejohn glanced at their line and saw instinctively where the weak points were.
 

He charged toward them, his feet staying close to the ground and moving in little crescents. Just before he came in range of them, he jolted to the right.
 

Two of the merchants tried to lunge forward and two held their spot. He knocked aside their poles with his shield and the haft of his own “spear,” then dealt one a sharp knock on the forehead. She tumbled back into the row behind her. Tejohn stepped back, to the right, then lunged forward again to deal the same blow to the man at the end of the row.
 

He sidestepped around them, moving onto their flank. The merchants tried to reform their line, but they were too slow. The man on the end of the line held his shield high enough to protect his head and Tejohn gave him a jab on the inside of his thigh just above the knee.
 

He kept moving to the right, knocking away their attacks with his shield and striking at their fingers and feet. They could have overwhelmed him, but they were afraid of taking a tap to the head.

“Enough!” Granny Nin called. The merchants stepped back and lowered their poles.
 

Tejohn gave one last hard knock to the shield of the nearest merchant, and she gave him a sour look. “You don’t lower your weapons when your commander calls for an end to the fight. You lower them when the other side agrees to it.”

“A fine point,” Granny said. She turned to Tejohn. “I’m glad the bandits don’t fight as well as you do.”
 

“You should drill them more often,” he said. “Start with their footwork. It’s not the heroic part of soldiering, but it’ll keep them alive.”

“I was only injured,” one of the merchant’s said. He sounded a little peevish. “He only gave me a flesh wound.”
 

“No,” Javien said. “He hit you on the inside of the thigh. If there had been a blade on the end of his pole, you would have bled to death by now.” The merchant looked like he wanted to argue the point, but a look from Granny Nin silenced him. Javien turned to Tejohn. “You used the grunts’ tactics against them.”
 

“What’s this?” Granny Nin said, startled.

“Flanking a line or a square is standard tactics,” Tejohn said. “If they’d been well trained, they would have adjusted the line.”

“Beacon Javien,” Granny Nin said, “what’s this about a grunt?”

“We saw one fight a line of spears barely a day outside of Ussmajil. They were Finstel soldiers and they...Were they well trained, my--friend?”
 

Fire and Fury, no one could have missed the little delay in Javien’s voice before he said
friend
. “They were good enough,” Tejohn answered. He threw his pole to the man who thought a cut on the thigh was a minor wound. “They had been well trained and the terrain was on their side, but they couldn’t adjust fast enough.”
 

Granny laid a hand on the young priest’s shoulder. “You saw them? Truly?”

Javien looked confused for a moment. “Granny Nin hears a lot of stories,” Tejohn said, “and is naturally skeptical.”
 

“We killed two of them,” the priest said. “We tricked them and burned them to death. And then... And then...” His face went pale and his hands began to tremble.

“Ssshhh,” Granny said. She took Javien’s hands and held them in hers. “We’re going to talk about this, my friend, but not like this. We’ll build a fire, serve a meal, and then we’ll talk. Would that be all right with you?”

He nodded. That’s what they did. Night had fallen by the time they had all eaten, and the entire caravan gathered close to listen to Javien tell the tale of his and Tejohn’s encounter at the farmhouse. He told it flatly, without affect, leaving out only the spells he had cast.
 

The merchants were understandably upset by the fate of the grunts’ victims, but they never doubted the necessity of it, not when the story came from a priest in his red robe. After he finished, two of the older women pulled him aside to talk quietly about what he had done. Tejohn was concerned at first, but when he realized they were going to exchange stories about painful choices they’d had to make, he backed off. As he’d told the Freewell girl a lifetime ago, talking with others who had experienced a similar pain had been the only useful thing that had ever helped his own case of the flinches.
 

As he settled back down in his spot, he realized that Granny Nin and the rest of the merchants were staring at him. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

“You would have laughed at me,” he said, trying not to be cruel about it. “You would have thought it was another folk tale.”
 

“But you were there. You saw it.”
 

Tejohn nodded. “That was the beacon’s first experience with grunts, but it wasn’t mine. I’ve seen both of them. The purple ones are larger, maybe twice the size of a man, and they don’t have the same bony ridges on their backs and arms. However, they operate the same way; if they’re hungry, they tear you apart and eat you. If they aren’t, they bite you to pass on the curse, then hold you captive until you change.”
 

“I’d kill myself,” one of the young men blurted out.

“You can’t,” the older woman beside him said. “Isn’t that what the beacon said in his story? They couldn’t kill themselves or harm each other.”
 

“One thing that few people know,” Tejohn said, “is that they talk to each other.” All of their attention was focused on him now, and he didn’t like it. “I’ve held a translation stone while they were nearby, and their grunts and roars are actually words.
Bless
and
Blessing
is all they ever say. I think it’s what they call themselves.
The Blessing.
What’s more, I think it’s the curse itself that’s talking. Even before you change, the curse starts to take control of you, and it doesn’t want you to kill it. It wants you to help it spread.”