The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (13 page)

“Go our own ways will be good enough for me,” Kinz said, slipping back into their hiding spot in the rocks. “I might make to change my mind if you keep talking about making the servant of me.”
 

From far above, they heard an eagle’s cry in the growing darkness. Cazia leaned out from under their protective outcropping to look at it, but the princess’s tiny hand pulled her back. Fine. They slept like the dead all through the night.
 

The next day they started southward again. On this side of the spur, the fog was thinner. That let them navigate toward the mountain range looming ahead of them more easily, but it also left them exposed to the eagles. Cazia wished she had managed to get hold of her iron darts before she escaped. The others had already warned her not to cast a fire spell at the eagles because it would reveal their location to every living thing in Qorr Valley, and without darts, she would be reduced to casting rocks at their enemies, like a naughty child.
 

It was embarrassing.
 

For three days, they skulked and sneaked across the valley floor, keeping to the trees as much as possible and not moving at all during sunrise and sunset, when the eagles were most active.
 

When they finally reached the base of the Northern Barrier, they saw a twining shaft of that same noxious climbing weed they’d used to enter the valley. Kinz exclaimed quietly and lunged forward, but Cazia caught her arm.
 

They crouched together at the base of a twisted tree while Cazia peered into the distance.
 

“There,” she said, pointing to a space below an overhang of rock. “A Tilkilit soldier, standing guard.”

Chapter 8

Ivy was sure there was no way around the sentry. She wanted to retreat into the valley and create weapons for each of them. Stone weapons, of course, since knapping flint was the best they could manage.
 

Cazia hated the idea. The Tilkilit’s spear points might have been made of copper--which wasn’t even as good as the bronze weapons the Indregai used--but they were metal. She did not want to face a trained Tilkilit warrior with a piece of stone in her hand.
 

“Stone can kill people,” Kinz said, as though she was tempted to prove it on Cazia.
 

“So can diarrhea,” Cazia snapped. “But I don’t want to rely on it in a fight. Why not go around him?”

Ivy peered through the trees at the cliff face. The climbing weed formed a sort of twining tower among the rocks. They were certainly faster and more convenient than using magic to tunnel. “That is the only vine for as far as I can see in either direction. There might be more, but the longer we look...”

“The more likely we are to run into a full patrol.”
 

Kinz sniffed. “I would rather make the risk with the one guard. There are three of us and we have faced them before. I am not afraid.”

“We were armed before,” Cazia pointed out. “And I don’t mean with flint axe heads and sharp sticks. Have you forgotten how strong they are?”

Kinz flinched and touched the shoulder the Tilkilit had broken. “Even so--”

“Even so, we can try to sneak by them and fight if we have to. All we have to do is wait for nightfall and sneak over to the side of the mountain. We can tunnel up to the ridge the same way we did on the other side of the mountain.”

Ivy and Kinz shared a look that suggested they knew this was coming and they feared it. “We remember that well enough,” Ivy said gently. “And we remember what it did to you. How it changed you.”
 

This conversation was unavoidable. “It hollowed me out,” she said. “It turned me into...into a wizard.” Not that they would understand what that meant.
 

“It made you mad,” Kinz said flatly. “You cared for nothing and no one, not even this girl you call
little sister
.”

“It hollowed me out,” Cazia said again. What did they think she was talking about? “But now we have the Tilkilit stones. If things begin to get bad for me again, you can touch one to me and return me to normal. You can lay the stone on me every three days.”
 

“Every day,” Kinz said. “You make the magic and, at the end, we
cure
you of it.”

“I’d need a full day off to get my magic back. We don’t have enough supplies for that. I did three days climbing the first time, so it should be enough.”

Kinz was adamant. “Every day.”

“Every two days,” Ivy said. “Cazia is right about our supplies, Kinz. Also, Cazia, you tried to be careful on the way up the mountain, did you not? Knowing there is a cure nearby would make anyone reckless.”

“Fine. Two days.” Cazia half expected Kinz to argue but she didn’t. “Maybe I ought to call you
little diplomat
. But going hollow isn’t the only problem we face. The other side of the Northern Barrier is straight vertical—just about—and covered with fused rock. I knew what I was digging through as I went. On this side of the mountains, it’s rock mixed with dirt, and you can’t tell when you’ll come out into a ledge or rift. What’s more, we’ll have to leave the bottom of the tunnel open to circulate air. I can partially block it, but if the Tilkilit find it--”

“They will have found us,” Ivy said.
 

“Probably. The thing is, the stone I create to block the tunnel will be pink granite; it won’t match the rock around it. I don’t know how long it would take them to dig through—I’m sure they could, eventually—but they would have a hidden path to the top of the ridge. They wouldn’t be able to get their worms out of the valley, but they could get troops out and, I don’t know, capture a scholar from somewhere to dig their big tunnel.”

“I would rather you made to collapse the tunnel behind us,” Kinz said.
 

“I would rather breathe,” Cazia said sharply. “On the other side of the mountain we had the Sweeps winds to stir the air in the tunnel. For this trip, we’ll have to break through the wall more often.”

Ivy glanced upward. Three of the giant eagles circled overhead. “But just small breaks, yes?”

“As small as we can get away with.”

The Tilkilit sentry was about two hundred feet above the valley floor, wedged into a space below a broad overhang. The dark red of its shell was nearly perfect camouflage in the mountain of the rocky overhang, but its white sash had given it away. The spiral vines grew just below it; the warrior had a commanding view of the area. Worse, the ground was largely made of loose stone with few trees. The girls would have no cover and no way to move quickly or quietly across it.
 

There was nothing to do but wait for whatever protection darkness might provide.
 

Kinz spent an hour of the fading daylight searching for a second stick that they might sharpen. There was little flint available on the bed of the forest, but a long branch with a sharpened point would be better than nothing. While she searched, Cazia found a handful of slender sticks about the width and length of arrows. The Tilkilit had taken her iron darts, and she wondered if she could fashion wooden ones as a substitute.
 

They were not all completely straight, of course, and she had never studied arrow-making. Still, she sharpened one end and straightened them as best she could.
 

When they seemed as ready as she could make them, she slipped away from the others to try them out. The spell that shot darts was her favorite and had been since she and Lar made a game of it in the practice room; as absurd as it sounded, she missed it.
 

However, her wooden darts were a complete failure. They had no ribbon at their tail and no fletching, so they couldn’t be made to fly true. She tried breaking them down to much smaller sizes, from the length of her hand to the length of her middle finger, but it was no use. No matter how she cast, the spell made the darts tumble after they left her hand.
 

Ivy might have had useful advice for her, but Cazia didn’t ask.
 

She could still cast stones, of course. The Tilkilit themselves, having a shell where humans had soft skin, carried a small mace instead of daggers. Maybe a blunt stone would be a better choice than a sharp spike.
 

She also had her fire spells. Since going hollow, she could attack farther and hotter, either as streams or bolts. Before the Tilkilit had captured her, she’d killed one of those monstrous eagles with a single spell.
 

Still, she wasn’t powerful enough to take on a whole army, and the others were right: a fire spell would burn like a beacon.
Here is the scholar you were hunting.
Every Tilkilit in the Qorr would converge on them. Cazia could fight--especially now that she’d gone hollow and then been cured—but spells were complex and slow to cast. Scholars were like archers: easily overwhelmed in close quarters.

There are three of us and we have faced them before. I am not afraid.
Kinz had said. For all her bravado, Cazia was acutely aware that Kinz herself, the largest and strongest of the three of them, had not killed a single Tilkilit warrior. At least, not that she’d noticed. Little Ivy had shot at least two. The rest had fallen to Cazia’s Gifts.
 

It was odd that her memory of the fights in the Qorr Valley were so vague while the escape from Peradain and the shot that killed her brother were so vivid. She shut her eyes—just for a moment—while the familiar flush of nervous anger--
 

Tap tap tap.

That was the Tilkilit click language, and it was coming from somewhere to the west. Cazia retreated to the little copse where she’d left the other girls. They stood in the gathering darkness, holding their pointed sticks like warriors readying for battle.
 

“Where were you?” Ivy whispered. “They’re coming.”
 

“Up,” Cazia said. “There are too many to fight.”
 

She boosted Cazia up into the lowest branches of an old--actually, she had no idea what kind of tree this was. Its bark was as yellow as a daisy and as smooth as ice. The bare branches were so thick, they didn’t even rustle as she climbed, and the trunk bulged in places as though it was full of tumors. Once again, she was reminded that it wasn’t only the creatures that were strange and alien inside the Qorr.
 

Ivy scampered into the place where the trunk split into a fan of thick branches, then kept climbing. Cazia knitted her fingers for Kinz to step into them, and after a moment’s irritated hesitation, she did. Once she settled into the notch of the tree, Kinz lowered her long stick to pull Cazia up.
 

Cazia fought the impulse to turn and run, leaving the girls up in the tree. She wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to save or abandon them, but she knew it came from an absurd and immature desire to show them how much they needed her. Instead, she grabbed Kinz’s stick and climbed, wishing she were the sort of person who went through life without ever suffering dishonorable impulses.
 

It took longer for the Tilkilit to come into view than expected. The sun had sunk below the highest peaks by then, and the glowing sky barely lit the forest floor.
 

The warriors moved carefully through the gloom. They carried their copper-tipped spears and parry sticks, of course, along with nets and some sort of lash Cazia hadn’t seen before. Their heads did not come anywhere near the lowest branches of the tree, and as slowly as they moved, none of them thought to look up.
 

As they moved away, vanishing in the darkness, Cazia realized she was holding her breath. Good. She held it for a little while longer, letting the creatures get farther away before she made any sound at all. If they were going to be caught, it wouldn’t be her fault.
 

“Hinge,” Ivy whispered, so quietly that Cazia wasn’t sure she was speaking at all. “That was a hinge sweep, where one end of the line barely moves at all and the other circles it. My uncle said it is used to drive your enemies toward a place where they can not retreat. That is why they were making so much noise.”
 

The little princess had the most rigorous schooling of anyone Cazia had ever met. “I didn’t notice,” she admitted, although it made her a little ashamed to say so. “Which direction were they trying to drive us?”

“South.”

That meant the warriors were heading for the Northern Barrier. Fire and Fury, it would almost have been better to be driven toward the mountainside. At least they would have been closer to home.
 

Unless there were more Tilkilit in hiding near the rocks.
 

It didn’t matter now. The creatures were headed toward the cliff face. The girls wouldn’t be able to make their escape until the way was clear.
 

They ate sparingly and slept in the unyielding branches of the strange tree.
 

Ivy woke Cazia before dawn. “You were snoring,” she whispered. Cazia apologized and groaned. Her back and legs ached, and her belly was empty. She was hungry all the time now; if she ever returned to civilization, the first thing she planned to do was eat until she was stuffed.