The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (23 page)

It worked, after a fashion. Of course, she didn’t sleep, but she did stop trembling. When she opened her eyes again, the stones were just stones. Just surface.
 

“Sudden dizziness?” Kinz asked. “That is unlike you. We have made to stand atop greater heights than this.”

“I can look into the world.” The words barely made any sense, and she was the one saying them. “I can look into the world and see its parts.”

“Well, do not do it again,” Ivy said. “We might not be able to catch you next time. You scared Kinz out of the life.”
 

“Yes, but the princess was unmoved.” Kinz took Cazia’s hand and helped her sit up.
 

“Thank you. This means something. I don’t know what, but going hollow and then coming back to myself has changed me in a way I do not fully understand. I didn’t even know I could do that.”
 

Kinz raised one eyebrow. “Make yourself sick?”
 

“It was the way the prince looked at the stone, yes? I saw your expression when he said it would be easy. You were not sure it was even possible before then, yes?”
 

“That’s true,” Cazia admitted. “He was hollow for longer than me and he went further. I’m not sure what he’s capable of. Fire take me, I’m not sure what
I’m
capable of.”
 

Ivy squeezed her hand. “Collapsing and vomiting, apparently. You wizards are a mighty lot.”
 

Cazia turned around to look back at the prince. Treygar was scrubbing the man’s back with more vigor than the old fellow found comfortable; that was clear. At the same time, the old soldier was speaking in a low, harsh voice that made Cazia a little fearful. Fire and Fury, she envied him the authority that age, size, and a deep male voice gave him, and she could not help resenting him a little bit, too.
 

“Let’s go.” The other girls followed her toward the prince, circling around so they would be slightly uphill from him. No one wanted his dirty water to touch the edge of their boots.
 

Ghoron apologized to her immediately. He explained that he’d mistaken them for Stoneface’s servants, and living a secluded life as he did left him vulnerable to pranks in his younger years. Cazia would have been happier with an apology that didn’t lay the blame elsewhere, but library or no, she needed his help to make more kinzchu stones. She nodded and forced herself to smile.
 

The soap worked remarkably well on him, but when Cazia rinsed it off--with warm water again, to the old prince’s obvious relief--it left him looking scrawny and scalded. Ghoron needed a sleepstone just for his patchy, scaly skin.

When he was clean, the villagers seemed convinced they would survive the morning and sent down meals for all of them. Ghoron’s came first, so he finished first and returned to the bottom of the cliff.

Esselba allowed herself to be lowered down the rope. She gave Ghoron an old scholar’s robe, and after he put it on, he attempted to embrace her. She wanted none of that. They sat on a flattish boulder at the foot of the cliff and talked quietly. Esselba’s arms were crossed and her feet pulled up tight to her body. The prince kept turning toward her with his arms loose and spread apart, but she only covered herself tighter when he did.
 

Cazia couldn’t help but wonder what their relationship had been. She looked too old to be Jagia’s mother. Grandmother? It was hard to tell. Eventually, she went back up the rope, and Ghoron shuffled barefoot toward them.

“I murdered someone,” he said. “I killed the girl who took care of my daughter.” He glanced at their faces; Cazia must have been staring at him in horror, because he immediately said, “She was only a servant,” as though that would lessen his crime somehow.
 

Before Cazia could think of an answer, Stoneface said, “Only a servant?”
 

“She was a good girl, though. Just a child, really. I don’t remember it.” He looked from one person to another. “I wasn’t myself when it happened. I suppose I shouldn’t keep saying ‘I did it’ when it was actually The Other. I’m not sure that will matter, though.” He turned at looked up to the top of the cliff. “I’m alone out here. No guards. No friends. No one to stand for me.”
 

“Do not expect me to make stand for you,” Kinz said.
 

“You’ll have to earn that,” Cazia said, turning the conversation back the way she wanted it to go. “You’re going to have to do the work to help us all. Then, afterward, we’ll see where things stand.”

Ghoron took a step back, drawing himself up tall in a shocked, fearful way. “You’re talking as though I might be hanged. I already told you, she was my servant. It was an immoral thing to do and unworthy of an Italga, but she belonged to me.”

“I have freed the village servants,” Tejohn said. “I have seen the collapse of the empire. Ellifer, Amlian, Lar, and everyone who supported them are gone. Their laws and customs no longer hold.”

The old prince quirked his head. “Is that why you’re here? So I can take Ellifer’s place?”
 

Cazia rolled her eyes, but the others just stared at him in stunned silence. “Only,” Treygar said, “if we wanted your throat cut.”
 

“He needs food and rest,” Kinz said. “Yes, he is made the bit of the fool, but people can not think clearly when they are half starved and exhausted.”
 

Cazia looked back at Ghoron. He stared down at his feet, his face flushed with embarrassment.
 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I would like to lie down again, I think.”
 

Treygar moved away from them. “I’ll talk to the people in the village.”

A new tray of food had been lowered, so Ghoron ate and drank his fill. “Better,” he said. Then he went to one of the wooden flats, pulled a blanket over himself, and fell immediately into a deep sleep.
 

By this time, Ivy and Kinz had already followed Stoneface up the side of the cliff. Cazia was alone with the prince and sat on the flat beside him. She wasn’t a bit tired, but she couldn’t just leave the old man sleeping alone in the open. There were worse things than Durdric and hill lions in these mountains.

She sat beside him and stared out over the courtyard. It suddenly occurred to her that it had been created by scholars. The Eleventh Gift had been used to make this space flat, and the loose stones—well, some had fallen from the mountain behind her, obviously, but many more had the strange squarish shape that mining scholars often created. She picked it one up and tested the weight of it.

Could she stare down into it and see it magically, the way she had with the lake? Probably, but ugh. Why would she want to put herself through that again? And why hadn’t Ghoron gotten sick when he’d done it?
 

There were too many questions. She stared southward over the courtyard, past the tower to the gray and black stones of the mountainside. There were clumps of grass and odd pink flowers growing from between the rocks, and twisted trees on the few ledges in sight.
 

To the north were the cliff and the rest of the village. That was the wondrous land of dinnertime, but she couldn’t enter. Not while the foolish old man they had come to see lay helpless.
 

She was startled by the idea of how she would have reacted to this situation just half a year ago. Having lived almost all of her life in the palace, with only a few excursions into the city of Peradain itself, she would have hated and resented old Ghoron just out of habit. One or two of his clueless remarks would have labeled him an Enemy. The only way she would have looked after him was if Lar or one of her other friends had asked.
 

Now she felt little more than pity for the man. She’d seen and done too much to think of him as an Enemy; he had become the worst boogeyman of her nursery stories, the hollowed-out scholar, and they had dealt with him easily.
 

Going hollow was a curable condition now. Just that simple fact would change everything about the way people lived, assuming human beings survived the war that was overtaking them. She looked out eastward, down the long, long length of the valley. The green shallows, the fringe of brilliant green marsh plants that surrounded it, and even farther away were the green grasses, patches of bright yellow, blue, and orange of the wildflowers growing there.
 

Her eyes filled with tears, and she wiped them away with a dirty hand. Colchua should have been here with her. She’d seen and done so many amazing things…it wasn’t right that her brother had missed out on them. He was the one who liked adventure stories, not her. He was the one who had been born to be a hero.
 

Lar, too, if she thought about it. Before the Festival, he’d had a plan to change the way the empire worked, a plan he’d said would make things better. Now the empire was gone, and so was he.
 

Kinz began to climb down the rope that connected the village with the prince’s courtyard, then once she’d reached the bottom, it was hauled back up and a basket of food lowered. The herder girl carried it to her, stepping carefully among the loose rocks.
 

“You have made tears,” the older girl said. She placed the bowl in Cazia’s hand and embraced her. “The quick hug now, so you can get something to eat. After you eat, I will make the longer one.”
 

Great Way, she was glad they had figured out a way to be friends. “I’m sorry,” Cazia said. She didn’t like to cry in front of Kinz, who had lost so much more than any of them. “I know things have been hardest for you—”

Kinz put her hand on the bottom of the bowl and pushed it up toward Cazia’s mouth. It was rice, of course, with carrot and some sort of dark roasted bird meat. “There is no competition in grief,” Kinz said. Cazia didn’t want to look up at her, so she began to eat. Fire and Fury, she was hungry. The older girl sat on the flat beside her. “No race to be made the most painful. All of Kal-Maddum should know this now.”
 

“Okay. I’m sorry for that, then.”
 

The girls laughed a little. Ghoron, lying beside them, stirred a bit but did not wake.
 

“Eat,” Kinz insisted. Cazia obeyed. “While you are here with the prince, the others are above, searching for stones like the ones the Tilkilit used.”
 

“We may not need the stones to be exactly the same,” Cazia said with her mouth full. “For translation stones, you need a gem, but for lightstones you can use almost any kind of rock.”
 

“Yes, I remember, but until we are sure how this must be done we must make safe choices. There is much work to be done, making enough…enough kinzchu stones for making of the army. You have two scholars for the work, and if you overdo it, we have stones to cure you.”
 

“But that would stop the work.”
 

“Yes.”
 

It was pretty clear where this conversation was going. “It would help,” Cazia said, “if we had a third.”
 

Kinz smiled and nodded. “I would make to offer myself to be that third.”
 

“Excellent. It only makes sense. We’ll start as soon as I finish eating. It’s supposed to be difficult to start your lessons as an adult, but we’ll try.”
 

Kinz clenched both of her hands in a unconscious show of excitement. “I am grateful. And before you say the words again, please do not make the apology to me for old hurts. We are different than we were.”
 

Cazia sighed. “That’s part of what I was crying about. Listen, I won’t pretend knowing magic isn’t absolutely wonderful, because it is. Not having to lug skins full of water around or rub sticks together to make fire is barely the start of it. But it’s also dangerous. You saw what happened to me.”
 

“You lost yourself.”
 

“I did. What’s more, if Old—Tejohn had been with us when it happened, he would have struck off my head without hesitation. He’s famous in part because he killed a scholar who had gone hollow and murdered dozens and dozens of people.”
 

Kinz tilted her head. “But you did not try to murder us.”
 

“I thought about it,” Cazia said. The words nearly stuck in her throat, but she forced herself to say them. “I came close to… Okay. The truth is that Ivy’s a little bit right about the possession thing. If you overdo it, that’s really what it’s like.”
 

Kinz nodded. “And we know the stones can make to cure the person once, but not if it will work many times.”
 

Cazia looked down at her hands. “Or even if
 
the cure is permanent. Kinz, my teachers lied to me because they wanted to control me, and that’s part of what got me into trouble. I’ll be honest about your limits—”
 

“But I will stay far away from them. I understand.”
 

Cazia sighed. This was her last unbroken oath, that she would never teach the Gifts of the Evening People to another without permission. Then again, who was left to give that permission? According to Stoneface, Doctor Twofin had gone hollow, and Ghoron Italga was just recovered from his own madness. Who was left to make these decisions but her?
 

Cazia laughed.
 

“What is so funny?” Kinz asked.

“I’m the youngest Scholar Administrator in history, and you’re my entire bureaucracy. Okay. The first step is to learn the proper mental state. Magic is all around you, all the time. All you need to do is open your mind to it.”
 

“How will I recognize the proper state?”
 

Cazia suddenly remembered the glow that had escaped Ghoron when he’d been cured of his madness. It had looked so much like portals…portals that had called to the strange spirit that had possessed her.
 

“It feels like connection.”

Chapter 14