The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way (30 page)

It was time to go. Everyone except Dhe gathered up the remainder of their supplies, then Cazia began to crumble the barricade. Ivy stood to one side of her with the kinzchu stone in her hand, and Tejohn stood on the other with his blunt spear.
 

There were no grunts in sight. Tejohn went through the door first, his blunt spear held low. After a quick glance around the compound, he signaled the rest to join him.
 

It was only when she got outside that Cazia realized just how stuffy and smelly their barricaded store room had become. She needed another bath.
 

The first thing they did was examine the cart. The ball of fire that had released Dhe from his curse had not damaged it and none of the grunts had thought to smash it. Cazia tied herself in place while Tejohn and Ivy helped Winstul over the rail. He was not spry, and he was not courageous about flying. Only when Tejohn offered to leave him behind did he find his courage. Ivy kindly helped to tie a rope around his waist, something that seemed to make him even more nervous.
 

Dhe sat facing Cazia. He made no move to tie the leash around himself, so Ivy had to take care of him, too, while Tejohn lashed the last of the food into the front of the cart.
 

The Evening Person blinked at Cazia several times while she took hold of the levers. Fire and Fury, it was almost as though he was expecting her to perform for him. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she deliberately looked away from him. There were no grunts visible in the late summer grasses, and she couldn’t see any of Mother’s people silhouetted against the blue sky.
 

“We’re ready,” Tejohn said.
 

Cazia prepared her mind then willed the cart off the ground. Within a few moments, they were dozens of feet in the air and soaring over the roof of the low tower.
 

Winstul cried out in a high voice, sounding very like a lake bird. “We’re too high! We’re too high!”
 

“Be quiet,” Tejohn snapped at him. “We have to get much higher so the grunts can’t knock us out of the air. Now let the girl concentrate.”
 

Cazia almost corrected him. Flying the cart required little in the way of steady concentration. Mentally, the strain on her was very light. Not that she wanted to point that out to their useless lumber merchant. He looked at her guiltily, then fell silent, hands gripping the rail.
 

She turned the cart into the wind and tilted the lever so they would pick up speed as well as height. The wind buffeted their faces, and a hard-shelled bug bounced off her upper lip. She shut her mouth and squinted—Fire would take them all if she was suddenly blinded by a stray insect.
 

Progress westward was slower than eastward, of course, because of the headwind. Where before the winds had felt almost gentle at their backs, now they were a misery. Before the day was half over, Cazia’s mouth and eyes were parched, and everyone’s spirits were low. They had all turned around to face her, just so they wouldn’t have to stare into the wind, and their expressions were surly. Song knew, she was the one who had a
right
to be surly; she couldn’t turn around.
 

“I can fly this for you, if you like,” the Evening Person said late in the day. He had to shout to be heard over the wind.
 

“I’m fine,” she snapped. In truth, she would have been happy to surrender control for a little while, but she did not want to give anything to this man, especially not responsibility for her life. Or gratitude for doing her job.
 

“I don’t need to sleep,” he said, his face still impassive.
 

She felt a little lump in her stomach; she was going to have to give in to him. “I saw you sleep,” she said stubbornly.
 

“I don’t need to sleep unless I am healing.”
 

She stared at him, trying to decide if he was telling the truth. Could he keep them flying through the night? It would certainly be safer than landing in the Sweeps, and it would get them back to the village sooner, too.
 

Fire and Fury, she needed to be back at Tempest Pass as soon as possible. There was work to be done and lives to save. The trip westward was already going to take entirely too long; the cart could be forced to move faster, but she didn’t think it could handle the strain. The whole thing might shake apart.
 

She didn’t want to trust Dhe, but she couldn’t think of a reason not to, except
I don’t like the way he looks.
Maybe if he were a human being, that would be a good-enough reason, but he wasn’t. He was this other…thing.
 

“Fine,” she said, with as little petulance as possible. “Watch how the levers operate.”
 

“I have been watching you—”
 

“Watch me as I explain them.”
 

He did. Then he untied himself and untied Cazia. She let him take control of the levers and tied him into place. She moved to the bench he had just left, half convinced Dhe would suddenly wrench the cart sideways and drop her out of it. He didn’t. She tied herself into place and everything continued as normal.
 

Was she being unfair to him? She had grown up among so many Enemies that mistrust was a habit. She’d thought she’d shaken that habit with Kinz, the Ozzhuacks, and Ivy’s people, but maybe…

She looked up at his expression. No. No, she wasn’t being unfair at all.
 

The trip took three days and two nights. They had no provisions other than meatbread, so Dhe ate nothing. Everyone else ate very little, not because provisions were short but because they were all heartily sick of eating the same thing all the time. Cazia did her best to keep the skins full of water, which everyone drank, even Dhe, although his distaste was stronger than the others’.
 

When they finally came within sight of Ghoron’s tower, Cazia directed Dhe toward the terrace where they would be expected to land.
 

Winstul looked around anxiously. “That’s a village down there,” he said, as though no one could see it but him. He glanced back at the Evening Person. “Should we give Dhe a covering of some sort? So he doesn’t alarm the locals?”
 

“Good idea,” Tejohn said sourly, “because there would be nothing alarming about leading a cloaked and hooded figure past their homes and playing children.”
 

Winstul flushed from embarrassment. Dhe flew them silently toward the terrace, slowing the cart much quicker than Cazia thought possible, then settling down.
 

The village folk stared at Dhe as they climbed from the cart and made their way from terrace to terrace, but none of them spoke or interfered. Cazia figured they were used to seeing powerful people passing through to visit the old prince, and they reacted to the Evening Person as if he was just another dignitary.
 

Dhe requested a private space where he could meditate, and Esselba waved her hand at one of the women nearby so she could lead him to one. Cazia, Winstul, Ivy, and Old Stoneface himself had slept on the cart during their long journey, but they were completely wrung out. They were escorted to the little cave where their accommodations had been made before, and found Kinz there.
 

After a happy reunion and a brief explanation to both Esselba and Kinz of what had happened and what they’d discovered, they slept like stones.
 

After waking alone the next morning, Cazia found herself tagging along with Esselba and Tejohn as they hurried toward the tower grounds. A ladder had been put in place, for which Cazia was quite grateful.
 

There were dozens of black stones on a makeshift wooden platform near the winch and pulley, and Ghoron, in a vicious rage, stalked back and forth in front of it.
 

“Stupid, ignorant, foreign
child
,” he fumed. “How dare you interrupt my work! Everything depends on us, and you bring everything to a blind, stumbling halt! You must have okshim stink where your brains should be!”
 

Before Cazia could lose her temper, Kinz said, “I touched the stone to him,” in a deadpan voice.
 

“And now I’ve lost a day and a half because of it! At least!”
 

Kinz looked at Cazia with the same serene expression that infuriated Ghoron so. “He was making the face you made.”
 

“It’s called
thinking
, you herd animal!”
 

“My prince,” Cazia said sharply.
 

He rounded on her, his goggling, watery eyes wide with annoyance. “What is it, girl?”
 

“You do realize you’re not actually a prince anymore, don’t you?”
 

Ghoron stepped back, his outrage evaporating. “What?”
 

“Your name, your title, your rank, none of them mean anything any more.” Cazia kept her gaze steady and her voice calm. “You have no family, no one who could send spears to support you, and absolutely no authority here. The only thing you have of any value is your skill as a scholar.”
 

“Now, hold on—”
 

“She’s right,” Tejohn interrupted. “Pay attention.”
 

“We need you. Your daughter needs you. Everyone out there in Kal-Maddum needs you. But if you’re going to act like a fool, we’ll find someone else, and you can go back to living in your own filth.”

Ghoron pulled himself up to his full height. He looked like he was going to go into a tirade, but one glance at Tejohn cut that off. He turned and stormed away from them, heading toward the little tent Esselba’s people had set up for him.
 

“Is it wise to antagonize him?” Tejohn asked. “We need him to make kinzchu stones.”
 

“What we need,” Cazia said, “is for him to teach me how to do it.”

“What? I thought he had. I thought the two of you were working together down in the courtyard, in that tent, making forty stones a day—”

Cazia shrugged. “I don’t make any. He keeps putting off those lessons.”

“Oh, does he?”
 

“It’s always the wrong time or he has too much to do or I should just mimic his hand motions. I figure I’ll be able to teach myself soon enough.”
 

Old Stoneface thumped the butt of his spear against the ground. Did the man never go anywhere without his armor and weapons? “You won’t have to. The prince is about to change his mind.”
 

“Miss!” Cazia turned to see Winstul coming down the ladder. “Miss, I have something of an emergency.” He came toward her and pulled back the sleeve of his robe. There was a patch of blue hairs growing there. “It came back this morning.”
 

Cazia sighed. Ivy would have to be told. Fire and Fury, the girl deserved better. “Take your pick,” she said, and waved to the pile of kinzchu stones on the table beside them. “Just keep them away from me.”
 

“What are all of these doing here?” the merchant said. He didn’t seem to be talking to her. “Aren’t they supposed to be making unmagic spears with them?” He picked one up, then shuddered as the effect passed through him. A puff of gray smoke escaped from his sleeve. Then he picked up a second one. “I have an idea. Maybe two.”
 

While Winstul went back up to the village, Cazia looked around the courtyard. She could have made a broad stair up to the next cliff, but she thought it best to get Esselba’s approval first.

Tejohn lifted his spear to catch her attention, then waved her over. Maybe she wouldn’t have time for those stairs after all. As she came near the pallet and tent that had become Ghoron’s home, the old prince scowled at her. “Since I am bereft of my magic, it appears I have the time for your lessons after all,” he said, a little sulkily.
 

The most annoying thing was that they were finished by mid day. All the time she’d spent sitting in the storeroom at the mining camp or waiting for that trip to be provisioned could have been used productively. This was a war, wasn’t it? Did they have to waste time just so one old man could feel important?
 

Apparently so. Once Cazia felt ready to make a few kinzchu stones on her own, she abandoned the old fellow to sulking on his pallet and returned to the bottom of the cliff. The villagers had lowered the black rocks into a pile near the cliff’s edge. Ghoron had been taking them, one at a time, to the table, then enchanting them.
 

It was a strange spell. The motions her hands had to do were eccentric—broad, sweeping movements with almost no finger positions—but it was the mental preparations that were most difficult. It was relatively easy to go through a set number of thoughts and sense impressions, but the First Plunder required a steady gray nothingness. It was almost like non-thought. She found it extremely difficult to manage until Ghoron finally admitted that he achieved that state by imagining he was still hollowed and the unliving intelligence was projecting the void onto him.
 

Why that worked, she couldn’t imagine, but it did.
 

Still, it was tiring work and went slowly. Villagers would periodically appear at the top of the cliff with a basket of black stones and dump them onto the growing pile. She began to feel guilty that she couldn’t keep up.
 

Late in the afternoon, she realized they had stopped bringing new stones. Her stomach began to grumble, and after miscasting twice in a row, she decided it was time to eat. Ghoron lay on his pallet with a blanket over him, his back to her. She climbed up to the cliff above.
 

Winstul stood in the center of the green, gathering people into groups and talking to them in a low voice. He was smiling, his body language humble and conciliatory, and the people he spoke with seemed a bit embarrassed. Esselba stood off to the side, her arms folded.