The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (8 page)

“I assume...” Cazia jumped up and rushed across the room. “Follow me.” She led them back through the low tunnel toward the bed with the lever above it. “Kinz, fit one of the stones there.”
 

The Tilkilit stone fit perfectly into the oddly hollowed end of the white lever. Then Cazia lowered it to the bed and lifted it again.
 

“Then this
is
a Tilkilit building!” Ivy said.
 

“No,” Cazia said. “No, it just means that the Tilkilit have their own version of the Evening People.”

Kinz snapped up the stone and returned it safely to her pouch. “What does that mean?”
 

“The Tilkilit empire was built with the help of a more advanced people. Just like the Peradaini, someone with powerful magic has been helping them. And whoever these benefactors are, they’re here, in Kal-Maddum.”

Chapter 5

When Tejohn awoke, everything about the tiny room he was in seemed different.
 
There was very little light, but it seemed to be pressing in on him in a way he couldn’t quite understand, as though he were under water.
 

A deep breath assured him that his back and ribs had been fully healed and he could move his arms and legs freely. The priests had healed him; it hadn’t been a trap at all, unless the Finstel king was waiting outside the door with a sledge.
 

As he swung his legs over the side of the stone, he heard tiny bells jangle. Someone had tied a cord of ceremonial chimes to his ankles. Sure enough, in the room beyond the door, he heard wooden chairs scraping against stone, then shuffling feet.
 

A young, clean-shaven fellow stepped into the doorway but came no closer. The light from the other room--the only light there was--lit only his edges, and there was something strangely vivid about him. His mussed hair and the folds of his robes were so clear, they appeared to have been cut out of the universe with a razor. “Tyr Treygar,” he said, halting in the doorway. “Do you need me to get you something?”
 

“Water,” Tejohn croaked. He wanted light, too, and food and news and weapons and freedom, but water would do for now.
 

The priest left the room and returned shortly with a bowl of water. He admonished Tejohn to drink in sips, which he did. When the bowl was empty, the priest went to the other room to refill it.
 

Tejohn looked around. He looked to be in the same underground chamber, but the rough stone walls were oddly detailed. The firelight from the other room made them a complex arrangement of contour and shadow. The priest returned.
 

Tejohn took the bowl. “How long?”

“Ten days, my tyr,” the priest said. “I have clean clothes for you, and a bowl for washing. Let me set the water by the fire to warm. Stay here, please, for the moment. The next room will seem painfully bright to you. I’ll bring more water, too.”
 

Tejohn watched him hustle from the room. The young man’s tone and body language held an earnest desire to please that Tejohn had never seen from a palace servant, who were usually creatures of chilly efficiency. Of course, now that Tejohn had spent a short time as a servant, he knew chilliness was a mask for raw hatred.
 

Ten days? He stripped off the robe they had draped on him. Someone had kept him clean during the long healing process: a servant, or was that priest’s work? And how had they prevented him from dying of dehydration?

Tejohn drained the second bowl more quickly than the first, then was given a bucket of water and a rag. If the water had been warmed in some way, it wasn’t evident, but he wiped himself down, then put on the robe the young man brought him. His was pale gray where the priest’s was red.
 

“Let me refill your bowl,” the priest said.
 

“Thank you.” That seemed to surprise him. Tejohn continued, “What’s your name?”

“Beacon Javien, my tyr.”
 

“That’s not a Finshto name, is it? Where are you from?”

The young priest glanced around the room as though he was being trapped. Tejohn knew how he felt. “My tyr, my family were Redmudds. I was an acolyte at the temple on Red Hill when the grunts attacked. We thought we were safe on our islands, but no. The beacons put me on a northbound boat, and I received my final initiation from Beacon Veliender. He’s Redmudd, too, although...”

He stopped there and his face flushed with embarrassment. He must have thought he was rambling.
 

“Thank you for looking after me while I healed,” Tejohn said.
 

“It is our duty to aid and guide those who travel The Way,” the priest answered. “If you feel strong enough to climb stairs, my tyr, Beacon Veliender would like to break her fast with you.”
 

Tejohn felt weak and famished, but Fire take the idea that he would be carried again. “I would like that as well. Lead the way.”

The young priest was correct. The fire in the hearth of the next room wasn’t large, but it was painfully bright. His eyes, shut for ten days, watered and ached as though he was trying to look directly at the sun.
 

The room was still full of people, which Tejohn had not expected but should have. They were so quiet, like parents sitting beside a babe in a cradle, or mourners beside a deathbed. Were they waiting their turn on the sleepstone? Fire and Fury, he hoped all those people hadn’t waited ten days for him.
 

The stairs were dark. The light from the candle Beacon Javien carried cast strange shadows around them. Tejohn began to suspect it was enchanted. Everything beneath the temple seemed alien.
 

At the top of the stair, Javien knocked at a heavy oak door, then entered at the command of a woman inside.
 

The room was much larger than Tejohn had expected, almost as large as his indoor practice gym at the palace and full of fresh air. There were day beds, desks, and tables set around the room in no particularly sensible arrangement. And there, at the far side, was an older woman, her gray hair tied back into a bun, working at her desk by candlelight.
 

She was so far away--perhaps twenty paces or more--but Tejohn could see her so clearly! There was so much detail that Tejohn felt a moment of disorientation, as though he were standing directly in front of her instead of across the room, and he swooned momentarily. Javien caught his elbow to steady him.
 

“My tyr, this way,” Javien led him to a wooden bench and practically shoved him onto it. “You should have told me you felt weak. If you had fallen on the stairs--”
 

“I’m fine,” Tejohn said. The gray-haired woman hurried toward them. “I don’t feel weak, just disoriented. My eyes... My vision has changed.”
 

Javien looked alarmed, but the woman’s expression softened as her concern turned into understanding. She addressed the young priest. “Along with his injuries, Tyr Treygar was treated for extreme nearsightedness.”
 

“Ah,” the fellow answered. “I was not informed.” There was a hint of reproach in his voice.
 

Tejohn looked around the room. Every desk, every candle, every wax tablet... It was all so elaborate. For his entire life, most of the world had been little more than colorful blurs, but now… It was as though a mist had blown away.
 

Everything was so detailed and specific. The grain of wood on a bench, the way a stylus and tablet lay beside each other, unique and discrete... Tejohn hadn’t imagined that the world contained so much
information
.
 

“I understand it can be disorienting,” the woman said, her voice deep and soothing. “You aren’t the first.”
 

“I could have done this years ago,” Tejohn said, unable to keep the resentment from his voice. “I knew my eyes were weak, but I had no idea the world was so...” He couldn’t finish that sentence. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say.
Full
. He had no idea the world was so full.
 

“There aren’t enough scholars or sleepstones to fix everyone’s vision or hearing, and with the way things have gone, it looks like there never will be.”
 

Movement off to the right caught Tejohn’s eye. An old fellow roused himself off a day bed and, after a quick glance at Tejohn, shuffled out through a side door. For a moment, Tejohn was embarrassed to have woken him, but he quickly realized that none of the other priests had hushed their voices. “I don’t remember waking up,” Tejohn said in the same tone. “I was on the sleepstone for ten days, but I don’t think anyone woke me for water.”

“You’re correct, my tyr,” the woman said. She had watched the old fellow step out of the room but now turned her attention back to Tejohn. “In fact, medical scholars will sometimes refuse to treat someone with injuries as extensive as yours, or will let them die on the stone. Severely injured patients can not be woken and moved during their sleep without harming them further. At the temple, we’ve developed a clever machine that will drip liquid, ever so slowly, into the sleeping person’s mouth. Water, diluted fruit juice, thin broth, it doesn’t matter. It’s never enough to drown or choke the patient, but it does wet their lips.”
 

“Why not share this clever machine with the Scholars’ Guild?”

She smiled. “That could be awkward, since they do not know we have sleepstones nor the skill to create them. As priests of the temple, we have tried to guide them toward the idea, but without success.”
 

Doctor Twofin, the scholar who instructed the prince in magic, had admitted that the Scholars’ Guild had secrets they kept from everyone, even the royal family. That was right before he had betrayed Tejohn and dropped him from a flying cart, leaving him broken and at the mercy of his enemies. The servants had secret societies of their own, he had also learned, that they called
cabinets
, because they were a source of necessary things. And now the priests of the temple as well?
 

Tejohn began to think he was the only person without a secret agenda…but no, that wasn’t true. The prince had given him a mission to complete, one Tejohn was not always free to talk about.
 

The old fellow returned through the side door again and moved toward the wall. No, there wasn’t a wall there. Tejohn hadn’t noticed it before, but where the wall should have been was open space.
 

As if his return was a cue, the older woman suggested they have breakfast together on the eastern deck. Sunrise would begin soon. Tejohn agreed, waving off Javien’s help. She turned to the young man. “Soup first, I think, considering. The rest when the kitchen is ready. We’re starting the day so early. And wake Ulmasc; we need her now.”

Beacon Javien hurried down the stairs, and the woman led Tejohn onto the terrace. “I would like to know the name of the person I’m speaking with,” he said simply.

“How unspeakably rude of me,” she said. “I was so caught up in worrying about you that I forgot my manners. My name is Beacon Veliender.”

“Ah,” Tejohn said. They had reached a table at the edge of the terrace. Veliender gestured to a seat that would allow him to have the best view of the coming sunrise. “That’s another Redmudd name, isn’t it?”
 

She gave him a crooked smile. “You could say that. It is, in fact, even older than the name Redmudd. Many, many years ago, when my clan surrendered their broken spears to the Peradaini, the...tyrants showed their fealty by changing their names to the Peradaini translation.”
 

“So, Veliender means ‘red mud’?”

She spread her hands. “Actually, it means ‘dirt soaked with blood,’ but the days when my people thought of themselves as deadly warriors are generations past. Battlefield losses will do that.”

Tejohn glanced at the old man, who was sitting at the next table. He stared off into the distance as though deaf to everything they said, ignoring them. Could he hear what they said and would he join them to break their fast? Tejohn had always heard that the priests had no hierarchy within their temples; everyone was a “Beacon” and no one was in charge. Of course, he didn’t believe it really worked that way for a moment, but this was the face they presented to the world. Perhaps the old fellow was the head of the temple.
 

A red glow had appeared over the horizon. Tejohn stared out into it, watching it spread across the sky. He’d seen the sunrise many times in his life, of course, but this was an entirely new experience. Laoni should be here beside him, he thought. The sudden strength of his longing for her startled him.
 

Bowls of steaming soup were set in front of them, and the smell of the eel broth made his mouth water. Beacon Veliender handed him a slender wooden spoon. “Considering your recent convalescence, let’s not worry too much about propriety, my tyr.”

She began to eat with gusto, and Tejohn did the same. There was very little actual eel in the soup, but the rice, onions, and carrots were very welcome. Still, he did his best to eat politely, only lifting the bowl to his lips and scraping the wooden bottom when it was nearly finished.